


the little death

by peterstank



Series: built from scraps [5]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: come along on a journey! let’s watch these smol spider spies break free from indoctrination!, good times in russia, probably not black widow (2020) compliant but i did my best
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-12
Updated: 2020-05-04
Packaged: 2021-02-28 23:13:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 68,863
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23095396
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/peterstank/pseuds/peterstank
Summary: Madame B grabs her chin and locks their eyes and it means that she is saying something very serious. She says, “Listen to me now: forget what came before this night. Forget the life you had, forget your family. They did not love you or want you. If they did, they would never have sent you here.”Maria’s lip begins to tremble. Madame B tuts. “Hush now, all is well. We want you. We will love you the way that you deserve to be loved. We will teach you everything you need to know. Do you understand?Weare your family now.”
Relationships: Maria Petrov & Natalia Romanov
Series: built from scraps [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1556035
Comments: 319
Kudos: 388





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> okay, so, if u haven’t kept up with my tumblr: this is the first chapter of maria’s story. i think the whole thing will probably be 3-5 parts. im not gonna lie, it’s been s o hard to write, but i hope it’s worth it and that you guys enjoy her story? fingers crossed? please?

“I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.” 

—Frank Herbert 

  
  


1987

Once when she was very small, even smaller than she is now, Maria had asked a question: 

_Where is my father?_

This simple utterance whispered quietly over salted potatoes had caused her grandmother to freeze. She looked as though she had been struck and Maria remembers wishing she could pluck the words out of the air and stuff them back in her mouth, swallow them up whole. 

“Gone,” Babushka had said flatly. “Dead.”

And that was that. 

But in the early hours of the morning when she is safe beneath her threadbare blanket, Maria keeps her eyes closed, keeps hold of the last bit of dream-matter, and conjures up an image. 

He is tall. His hair is brown like her own and his eyes are, too, because brown eyes aren’t cold like green. He has wrinkles around them because he smiles a lot. 

Nice men are always smiling. 

The best part: he is not dead—just very far away, so far he has never even heard of Maria. If he had, she would be with him. She would be at his side as he travelled the world looking for gold or lost cities or writing books. 

Maria stays with him in the dreams until Babushka rips the blanket away, and with it all of the warmth. 

“Up,” she says. “Help Deda with the goats today.”

Maria has never helped with the goats. She is only five, and after all, why can’t he just do it himself like he does every day? 

“Quickly!” Bab snaps. “Up before he breaks his back doing all that work himself!”

There is no breakfast laid out this morning because Deda always eats after working. Miserably, Maria slips into her coat and trudges from the house to the barn. The ground is slushy and mud flecks her boots. Every breath is a white cloud that floats up to kiss the grey sky. 

Deda is quietly shoveling hay when she slips through the big barn doors. He does everything quietly: speaking, eating, working. Sometimes he will go so long without talking that she forgets what his voice sounds like—but then he will laugh, and his laugh is so big and booming, it seems as if the floorboards shake with it. 

“What are you doing here, Maria?” he asks, mumbled Russian words, a beard covering the mouth she has never once glimpsed. 

“Babushka said to come and help you.”

“That old woman,” he tuts and sets the trough aside. “She thinks she knows what’s best for both of us, hmm? But you are so small, Maria. What can you do?”

She scans the barn and thinks hard. “I could milk the cows for you.”

Deda squints. “I suppose so. Come, let me show you the goats first. Dirty business we have to do today.”

* * *

Babushka buttons the coat and winds the scarf around Maria’s neck twice. She puts mittens on her hands and pulls a hat over her head. 

“Where am I going?” asks Maria. 

“Somewhere far away, where you can hurt no one,” replies Babushka. 

Maria looks at the door where the two men wait. They are dressed nicer than anyone she has ever seen—shoes polished so much that they gleam, no beards, soft silken suits. They have not said a single word to her. They have not even smiled. 

She looks back at her grandmother. “Are you coming?” 

“You go alone.”

Maria feels something crack inside. Desperate, she grabs for the older woman. “Don’t you love me?”

Babushka stares down at where they are touching and for a second there is a flicker of doubt. Then: 

“Go. You are never to return, understand?”

* * *

Maria is taken in hand by a thin, pale old woman who reminds her more of a willow tree than anything else. She does not smile or even acknowledge Maria’s existence beyond touch: her grey eyes are fixed on the men that had brought Maria here and she doesn’t blink when she says, “Thank you for bringing her. You may go.”

“Not even a hot meal?” asks the taller of the two, the one with the scarred face. 

“Not even a hot meal,” snaps Lady Tree. “Your duty was to bring me my new charge, not dawdle in my foyer.”

The man’s lip twists with disgust. “For forty-eight hours I had to watch that little brat—”

“Leave,” Lady Tree instructs, “or I will make you.”

And though he is still furious, his eyes grow wary and lose some of their heat. He jerks one of the front doors open and snaps to his companion, who jumps and follows after him down the long walk Maria had just made from the gate.

Lady Tree squeezes Maria’s shoulder. It is not a gesture of comfort; she nudges her toward the mouth of a darkened hallway and then says, “You must be hungry.”

Maria nods. They do not speak until they are sitting together at the counter in the kitchens—they are bigger than Maria’s old house, both floors combined probably, with a range that Bab would have killed for. The food on the plate is more than she gets in a whole day. 

“Do you understand why you are here?”

Maria swallows cheese and shakes her head. 

“It is because you are dangerous,” Lady Tree tells her. “But don’t be scared: it is the good kind of dangerous. You can learn from it, you can use it to bring glory to our great nation. Do you understand?”

Maria nods, even though she does not. 

Lady Tree watches her for another moment, steady and still. 

“I am Madame B. What is your name?”

“Maria,” she chokes out. 

“No,” the older woman corrects, “Your surname.”

“Petrov.”

“That is how I will address you.” 

Then Madame B grabs her chin and locks their eyes and it means that she is saying something very serious. She says, “Listen to me now: forget what came before this night. Forget the life you had, forget your family. They did not love you or want you. If they did, they would never have sent you here.”

Maria’s lip begins to tremble. Madame B tuts. “Hush now, all is well. _We_ want you. We will love you the way that you deserve to be loved. We will teach you everything you need to know. Do you understand? We are your family now.”

* * *

That first night, Maria is led up a rickety spiral staircase to a garret. There are two rows of beds, all with white iron frames pushed up against the walls. Maria counts twenty in total. 

“Hush now,” Madame B whispers, guiding her toward the very last bed in the corner. It is perfectly made, with pressed sheets and a silk pillowcase. Maria realises very suddenly how tired she is. 

“Get in the bed,” Madame B orders, and so Maria toes off her shoes (they will be gone in the morning; replaced with a pristine pair of black combat boots) and climbs under the covers. Then Madame B says, “Raise your arms.”

Maria frowns. “What?”

“ _Hush,”_ she hisses. “Raise your arms, child.”

Madame B has not harmed her thus far and so Maria sees no reason not to comply. She does as the older woman asks.

Something rattles behind her head. Maria looks up and her eyes widen at the sight of handcuffs—two pairs, each clasped around a bedpost on either side of her body. She is too stunned to react when one wrist goes in, but at the other, she squirms and tries to rip away, screaming.

“Be silent!” Madame B snaps, wrestling her down. “It is only for the night!”

“No! No! _Deda!”_

But Deda is not coming. Deda is dead. 

_You killed him,_ a voice whispers in the back of her mind; a rattling like a hundred bees. 

_We killed him,_ she corrects, still thrashing, still screaming, ignoring every blow that the old matron administers. She can’t feel them. Her skin is hot

(no, no, not again, not again—)

“Listen to me, girl: it is _only_ for the night. It is to _protect_ you. They will be removed for breakfast, understand? Look around you! You have woken the others. Are you not embarrassed?”

And that does it. Suddenly the ringing dies away. It is silent, aside from the loud voices of all those eyes on her. Every girl in the garret is cuffed to their beds. They breathe easy. They have no fear.

Maria’s face heats up. “You promise?”

“Why would I lie?” The woman asks, impatient now. 

Maria’s belly churns with shame. She doesn’t want to ruin things already. Slowly she lays back down and lets her other wrist be locked in place. It hurts a little, but not too much. She cannot sleep on her side anymore as she likes, though, but elects not to complain. 

Madame B covers Maria back up. She straightens her skirt and then stares for a moment with those piercing grey eyes, which eventually rove over all the other girls in the room. She says to them at large, “Sleep now.”

No sounds are made during the woman’s walk from Maria’s bed to the door, but as soon as it is closed and the faint creaks of her descent are heard, the room erupts in whispers.

It’s too much like the buzzing for comfort. 

“Hey— _hey, you.”_

She cracks an eye. Turns her head to the right and sees two big brown eyes staring right at her. 

“What’s your name?” the girl hisses. 

Maria swallows. She remembers what the woman said. “Petrov.”

“Vostokoff,” the other girl returns with a jerk of her chin. Then she says, loudly but not too loud, “hey everyone, this is Petrov! Petrov, these are the girls.”

They all murmur greetings. One even waves her foot. 

“We’re grouped together here. Ages four to seven. I’m the oldest. What about you?”

“Five,” Maria whispers. 

Vostokoff grins. “A little _mladenets._ You are taller than five.”

“I eat a lot.”

Vostokoff laughs. “ _Da,_ that will stop soon. They give everyone the same amount here. No sharing, no trading.” She smiles quick and sharp like a knife. “But if you know how to do it right, you can get away with it anyway.”

Maria swallows again. Her throat feels thick like she might cry. 

Vostokoff notices. Maria will learn quickly that everyone in this manor notices absolutely everything. Her eyes narrow. “The first night is always the hardest,” she says, so low no one hears but Maria. “You will get over it. Forget what came before. Me? I can barely remember my parents’ faces. They sold me for a thousand rubles—just enough to get their next fix.”

“Fix?”

Vostokoff scoffs. “Whatever. Sleep, Petrov.”

Maria watches the girl turn her head away. The whispers slowly die down. Maria never sleeps, though. She stays wide awake until a man comes to unlock her chains in the morning. 

* * *

They eat breakfast in a long dining room. It is the most ornamental place Maria has ever stepped foot in. The walls are covered with gold-framed paintings, the windows are tall and arched, the table is faultless mahogany. 

Madame B sits just to the right of the head chair. No one ever comes to occupy it. 

“It’s for the headmaster,” Vostokoff whispers conspiratorially when she catches Maria staring. “He never comes, but she never sits in the stupid chair. Silly if you ask me.”

Maria wasn’t. 

She quietly returns to her soup. And how strange is that? Soup for breakfast.

After that, Maria is led into an antechamber. It is much smaller in size and far more intimate, furnished with plush velvet couches and chairs. There are paintings in here, too, and the floors are polished hardwood. The girls all sit around in places long established as their own. 

Maria hovers by the door. 

Vostokoff elbows her on her way in. “Sewing hour,” she says, around a mouthful of stolen bread. “Madame B is filing reports now. We’ll embroider until our stomachs are settled and then train.”

“Train?”

Vostokoff stares for a long minute and then laughs. “Funny. What else would you be here for, Petrov?”

Maria doesn’t have an answer. She follows Vostokoff over to a low loveseat and takes the supplies offered. “You’ll sit with me today,” Vostokoff says, like it’s a kindness, “but tomorrow Kuznetsov will have to take your place. Look how angry she is.”

Maria follows Vostokoff’s eyes and sees a girl her age sitting primly on an ottoman. Her movements are stiff and robotic. When she glances up at them and sees Maria staring back, her face flushes all the way to the roots of her curly blonde hair. 

“She doesn’t look mad to me,” Maria mutters. “Only embarrassed.”

“That’s because you haven’t learned to really _see_ yet,” Vostokoff says with authority. “But you will. We all do.”

Maria absorbs that. Her fingers fumble with the thin needle. After a few attempts in which her stitches always turn out crooked, she gives up and decides to try and _see._

There are only eight other girls in the room. The rest from Maria’s dorm had split off to another chamber. Faintly she can hear music playing—that must be them practising. 

The girls with her now move fluidly. Their attention is rarely diverted from their task. Sometimes they exchange low whispers, but other than that they are calm and quiet. 

All except—

“Romanova,” Vostokoff informs Maria, “she is a disobedient little demon. Rumor has it that she’s really a changeling.”

Maria squints at the little redhead who can’t be more than three. She’s repeatedly stabbing her board with a needle. “A changeling?”

Vostokoff puffs herself up a little, glad to once again know something that Maria doesn’t. “It’s when a baby is switched out with a dark elf.”

At that, Romanova snaps, “I am _not_ an elf!”

“Then how come you have horns?” asks Vostokoff.

“I don’t!”

“Liar, I can see them poking out from your head. And your tail, too—forked like the devil’s.” 

“It’s not forked!” Romanova exclaims, and then realises her mistake. She flushes. “I _don’t have a tail!”_

Vostokoff giggles and pokes out her tongue, which only riles Romanova up all the more. She charges the older girl, who easily gets the drop on her. Romanova withers with shame. 

“Oh, let her alone,” Maria begs, surprising herself and everyone else in the room, given the way they all look up. Face hot, she adds, “She’s only a little girl.”

“I am not!”

“We are _all_ only little girls,” Vostokoff snaps, but releases her hold. “Only _some_ of us know how to behave.”

Romanova’s face screws up. She looks like she might hit Vostokoff, but then Maria says sharply, “Don’t.”

To her surprise, the littler girl hesitates.

“You’ll only cause yourself a world of hurt,” Maria goes on, superior like, pulling on her silver thread. “She could break your legs a thousand different ways.”

“What’s it to you?” Romanova snaps. 

“It doesn’t matter to me,” Maria tells her indifferently. “But if you _don’t_ listen, you’ll only be proving to everyone in this room that you’re as stupid and wild as they say. Is that what you want?”

Romanova scowls. Her hand falls to her side, limp. 

“ _No,_ ” she says, and storms away. 

Later, they line up in the foyer. The little red haired girl steps out of place and begins to clumsily pirouette in front of them all. Maria smiles against her own will. 

“Enough!” Madame B hisses, and hits her with the rod she carries at her side. 

Maria is not smiling after that.

* * *

They are divided into pairs. Maria is put in front of Vostokoff, who smiles because she knows, like Maria does, that she will win easily.

Maria has never fought anyone before. She has never thrown a punch. 

( _But you’ve killed._ )

There is a man—tall and broad and bearded—who kneels beside her and grabs her wrist. It looks so small in his beefy hand. She thinks he is going to strike her, the way Madame B had struck Romanova, but instead he says, gently, 

“Wrap your thumb around the first knuckle of your ring finger.” 

Maria blinks. She corrects herself, untucking her thumb. 

He nods. Pats her fist. “You will break it otherwise.”

He stands. Scans them all in position on the black mats. “Just freestyle today, little ones. Trust your instincts.”

He blows a whistle. 

Vostokoff pounces.

* * *

Mess is held in a different room than breakfast—a long den with a low ceiling and panelled walls, in the basement closest to the kitchens so the food is served piping hot; pots of steaming borscht and solyanka, pelmeni, pirozhki stuffed with potatoes and cottage cheese, golubtsy and red sauce, plov, and potato kugel. It is more food than Maria has ever seen in her life, and it tastes better too. 

“Almost makes up for the handcuffs, huh?” asks Vostokoff, mouth full. 

Maria bites her tongue. She resists the urge to reach up and touch her blackened eye, just to remind them both where it came from. 

Vostokoff seems to sense this though Maria hadn’t moved. She sighs. “Listen Petrov, it’s nothing personal. We fight. We train. If we are good, we stay. If we are bad, we go. I want to stay. I want to serve my country. Kalach?”

Maria takes the bread. 

“How do I learn to fight like you?”

“Practise,” Vostokoff says. She sniffs. “But you will never be as good as me. I am the best.”

That is the first day.

  
  


* * *

  
1992

  
  


It is five years until they meet Soldat. 

By this time they’ve been training in every way imaginable: martial arts, hand to hand, sanshou, judo; with swords, with knives; with fists and feet. 

Maria gets better. 

But she is not _the best._

Then at breakfast, someone is sitting in the head chair.

Maria almost stumbles—but she is learning, like they all are, to hide her emotions; to quell her surprise, to mask her fears, to put on different faces. She keeps walking, smoothly, to her place. 

Romanova plops into Vostokoff’s usual chair at Maria’s right hand. 

Maria stares.

“What?” Romanova asks. She’s using an American accent today. “Do I have something on my face?”

“Funny. What are you doing, sitting there? Vostokoff will kill you.”

“She can try,” Romanova says with a shrug, and despite being even more petite than Maria herself (and two years younger to boot), Maria knows the other girl could probably take Vostokoff on. “The man—do you know who he is?”

“Do I look like I would know that?”

“Good, then I’m not the only one in the dark. Pass the blinchiki, would you?”

Maria does as she asks, all the while eyeing the man at the end of the table warily. He says nothing, eats nothing; just watches them with one arm resting against the table and the other—this one made of _metal—_ loose at his side. 

They make eye contact. 

Maria almost flinches, but before she can be afraid there is only concern. 

His eyes are so sad. They look like her own. 

“What is this?”

Maria rounds and finds Vostokoff with her hands on her hips, fuming. Romanova snorts into her pancakes. 

“Breakfast,” Maria says dryly. “Want some?”

“I want to know what this little _gremlin_ is doing in my _chair._ ”

Romanova bristles. “I am _not_ a gremlin.”

“No? Then explain your scales and forked tongue!”

“How about you explain your monkey tail and one eye?!”

Vostokoff stomps her foot. “That doesn’t even make sense!” 

“It makes sense if I say it does!”

“You are the _devil!”_

“And you’re his wife!” Romanova snaps. 

“ _What?!”_

Maria closes her eyes briefly. “Would you both please be quiet?”

“Not until she moves—”

“Not until she _dies,_ ” Romanova says, loudly.

“That’s no way to speak to your sister.”

They all freeze. Maria’s stomach drops as she slowly raises her gaze to the man. He is now standing behind them all with a blank face. 

Romanova is undaunted. “She’s not my _sister,_ ” the little girl snaps. “She’s a witch.”

“I was informed otherwise,” the man says. His voice is so flat, almost dead. It makes her feel sick. “Your name?”

He’s looking at Vostokoff. She tells him her name through gritted teeth, all the while glaring daggers at Romanova. 

“Take my seat,” he says. “I don’t need it.”

Vostokoff’s eyes widen. “But Sir—”

Suddenly his features sharpen and the words die in her throat. Maria watches the other girl practically run for the chair at the head of the table. 

“Great,” Romanova mutters. “Now she’ll never shut up.”

“Should I have given it to you?” the man asks.

“No,” Maria says. 

“ _Yes,”_ Romanova counters. 

“But then you wouldn’t get to sit beside your friend.”

“She’s not my—” Romanova starts to say, but then cuts herself off. Her cheeks are red. “Whatever. I want more cakes.”

Maria passes the platter again with a faint smile she doesn’t bother hiding. 

* * *

“You were going easy on her.”

Maria’s head shoots up. She had volunteered to stay behind and clean up after they finish, and the gloves she’s holding almost drop out of her hands. “I was _not.”_

“Yes, you were,” the man insists. “You were pulling your punches, I saw it.”

Maria bites her tongue and looks away. So, maybe he’s right. Maybe this man with his robotic arm and strange American accent is _correct._ Maybe she’s pulling her punches because she doesn’t want to beat Vostokoff, because she doesn’t want to have to deal with what comes after. 

Either Vostokoff will confront her, or something will shift: Maria will take Vostokoff’s place at the top of the food chain, and she will have to deal with being the one that everybody looks to.

She does not want that.

Abruptly she asks, “What’s your name?”

“ _Soldat.”_

“ _Soldat,”_ she repeats slowly. “That’s it? You haven’t got a real name for me to call you?”

Soldat hesitates, his mouth opening and then slamming shut. Maria’s eyes widen with the realisation that he just doesn’t _know._ He doesn’t know his _own name._

“Soldat,” she says quickly, because he looks ill now, “I wasn’t pulling my punches. You must have bad eyesight. Goodnight.”

Normally they are supposed to wait for dismissal, but he is new and too startled to stop her. Maria leaves with her chin in the air and her fists balled.

* * *

For the next few days Soldat is nowhere to be seen. Maria looks for him in the halls as they go from arithmetic classes to the dance studio, and she searches for his face at every meal—not that he would be hard to spy, but still. 

He is nowhere.

She tries to ignore the churning in her stomach; the guilt, knowing that she might have upset him in some way and now he is gone for good. 

It’s a shame. He seemed okay. 

Five nights before Rozhdestvo, Maria dreams. 

She doesn’t sleep often, truth be told. When she does, nights pass like blinking: just blackness and then morning. But tonight it is different. 

She is in the barn again. 

Deda is standing in front of the goat, holding a knife to his neck. 

For a moment it does not occur to her to be afraid, and then all at once like being doused in cold water, she cannot _breathe._ “Deda,” she tries to say, “don’t!”

She doesn’t expect her to listen. He hadn’t last time. 

But the knife falls out of his hand and he drops to his knees. Maria runs to him, forgetting that he’s dead in her worry. “Deda, I’m so sorry, I’m so _sorry—_ ”

“ _Malyshka,_ ” he sobs, “I have been trying for so long.”

“Deda—what do you mean? Trying? Trying what?”

“To _see you._ ” 

The tears in his eyes are like stars. Maria shakes her head as she stares into them, trying to find meaning in the constellations. “Why would you want to see me after what I did? Don’t you hate me?”

“No, _Voskhod._ I hate _me_ more than I could ever hate you. What I did—I scared you, didn’t I? I’m so sorry for that. I wish I could take it back.”

By now she is sobbing. “Deda, I _killed you.”_

“Shh,” he pulls her into his arms and it’s so _real._ He even smells real: like pine and coffee and hay. She feels warm tucked against his chest with her face pressed against his neck, his beard scratching her forehead. “It wasn’t your fault.”

“It _was.”_

“I said it _wasn’t,_ you stubborn little ox.”

Despite it all, she laughs. 

“That’s my _Malyshka,_ ” he whispers. “God, you’ve grown. Now listen close because I don’t have much time: what you did that day is a _part_ you, and it does not have to be a bad one. Look at us now, talking like old friends because of it!”

“You mean this is real? It’s because of… the darkness?”

“Just because it is dark does not mean it is bad. Take the night, Maria. The power it holds, the secrets within it—”

Maria is crying again, because it has been so long since anyone has called her by her _name._ She missed the sound. She forgot the way it rolled off the tongue. 

“Hush now,” he puts his weathered hands on either side of her face. “I want you to know that where there is bad, there is also good. I want you to be _strong_ for me, understand? And no matter what, _don’t let them control you.”_

Before she can ask what he means by that, before she can even process his words, he begins to crumble before her very eyes.

“Deda!” she screams, clawing at what remains of him, but it only makes it worse. “ _Deda! Come back! Deda!”_

Then he’s gone, and what follows is enough to turn her good dream into a nightmare: the cry of a dozen goats as their necks begin to smile and seep blood. It pools on the barn floor, rushing for her like an ocean wave, and Maria is screaming and struggling to stand, but she keeps slipping in it, and—

“Shut up, would you?”

Her eyes snap open. 

Above her, Romanova scowls. Maria blinks, but it’s like she hadn’t slept at all; there is only her pounding heart and Romanova’s body heat—and that doesn’t make sense. It’s night, after all.

“How did you get out of your cuffs?!”

Romanova’s look of annoyance shifts into something unimpressed. “You’ve been here five years and you haven’t figured out how to get them off yet?”

Maria’s face heats. “Shut up,” she hisses.

“Me? What about you? You almost woke everyone up with your moaning.” Her lip quirks up. “What were you dreaming about?”

Maria would slap her if she could. “Nothing! Just—what do you want?”

Romanova leans back to sit on Maria’s stomach. “I want to show you something,” she says, almost shyly. Maria’s never known her to speak like that. 

She swallows. The aftershocks of the nightmare have faded now, leaving a restless feeling in their wake. She tugs her arms. “Fine. Get me out of these, would you?”

* * *

Romanova leads her by the wrist through the halls of the manor. Their feet are silent against the marble tiles. They pass the dance studio, which is hauntingly vacant and dark, and their shadows are like little demons in the mirrors. 

“Where are we going?”

“Hush,” Romanova hisses. 

Maria rolls her eyes. Nonetheless, she lets herself get dragged toward one of the many doors in the hall that always remain locked. Maria’s hackles rise. She begins to worry that this is all some elaborate trick: that Romanova is leading her to her doom, trying to get her caught out of bed after curfew, or something even worse. 

Instead, Romanova pulls a pin from her hair and picks the lock. 

The door swings open. Inside there’s just blackness.

“Servant’s passages,” Romanova explains. “This one leads to the kitchens.”

“The kitchens?”

“Aren’t you hungry? I’m always starving after nightmares.”

“You get nightmares?”

“Who doesn’t?” Romanova keeps dragging her along. They slip through the dark with little issue, for by now they both know how to feel their way through it, and emerge just where the younger girl said they would. 

Romanova flicks on the light, and to Maria’s surprise, the counters are absolutely _covered_ in different sweets.

“They’re for the Holy Supper,” Romanova explains. “I had to help Inna make them as punishment for slapping Popov.”

Maria frowns. “You slapped Popov?”

A shrug. “She was getting on my nerves. Here, try the Zefirs.”

Romanova passes her a silver platter of the little pink and white treats. Maria grabs one warily. “Won’t she notice?”

“There’s enough food here to feed an _army,”_ Romanovna says, as if that isn’t what they are. “Come on, live a little.”

If it were Vostokoff, she wouldn’t do it, but Romanova is different. She only breaks rules she thinks are stupid, but follows everything else by the book. She doesn’t try to trick people or get them in trouble. 

So Maria takes the sweet, and Romanova takes one too, and soon they’re breaking little pieces off of cakes and stealing chocolate covered apricots and sitting cross-legged on the floor, devouring their collection. 

“Do you remember where you’re from?”

Maria pauses her chewing. “We aren’t supposed to talk about that.”

“Oh come on, it’s just us.” Romanova scoots a little closer. Her lip quirks up again. “I won’t tell.”

“I… I grew up in a big house by a lake. We had a dog named Malchik.”

“Liar.”

Maria rolls her eyes. “Why do you want to know anyway? Madame B says none of those things matter. The girls we used to be are dead.”

Romanova shrugs. “I just… don’t want to be the same as everybody else here. I’m not a robot. I come from somewhere just like you.”

“Do _you_ remember where you came from?”

“Yes, but I’m not telling.”

“Why not?”

“Because I have more willpower than you do. Now fess up—where did you live?”

Maria startles herself by laughing. She cannot remember, well and truly, the last time she really _laughed._ It feels nice, and Romanova is smiling at her, and—

and Soldat is standing in the doorway. 

Romanova follows her gaze when the laugh dies in her throat. “What—oh.”

Soldat steps closer. He doesn’t look angry, really, more confused. “It’s after hours.”

“ _Da,_ ” Romanova says simply. 

He eyes their mess. “You wouldn’t want the matron to catch you like this.”

“Madame B could sleep through a train wreck,” Maria says, surprising herself again. Something about Soldat makes her feel bolder. “Besides, there were too many. They would have gone to waste anyway.”

Soldat studies them both for a minute. Then he steps aside so that the doorway is clear. 

“You’d better get back,” he says, so soft it’s almost sad. 

Maria’s gut clenches. Everything about him strikes her as wrong: the way he speaks, the look in his eyes, the downward turn of his lips. He moves and breathes like a wounded animal searching for somewhere warm to die.

“But we were just—”

“Romanova,” Maria hisses, standing, “let’s _go.”_

The little girl’s shoulders fall. Reluctantly she gets to her feet and brushes the crumbs off of her sweatpants. “Stupid cerfew.”

“Stupid _you,”_ Maria counters. “You gave yourself a sugar rush.”

“So did _you.”_

Soldat watches them as they pass. Maria resists the urge to ask him what _he’s_ doing around after hours, but she knows it’s not her right. She doesn’t question it when the door gently closes behind them. 

On the way up to the dorms, Romanova stops on the step above Maria. She tilts her head to appraise the older girl. “You’re not half bad, you know that?”

Maria grins. “Thanks. Can’t say the same about you, though. You’re _all_ bad, Romanova.”

Her first real friend throws back her head and laughs, and when she laughs she snorts, and that makes Maria giggle. 

It is the best feeling, she decides: having a sister.

* * *

Soldat scares the other girls, but he doesn’t scare Maria. 

For the first time, she is seeing something the rest of them can’t: she can see the pain in the darkness of his eyes, the way he watches them like he is seeing someone else. Someone he lost? Someone he loved?

She wonders about it. Sometimes she watches him back, at breakfast or in the weaponry; she lurks around the corner while he sharpens knives and flips them like they are made of rubber. He never cuts himself. He never fails. 

One day he says, “I can see you.”

Maria’s stomach drops. She pokes her head out. “Maybe you’re not so blind after all, Soldat.”

He doesn’t smile. She’s _never_ seen him smile. He’s never looked anything but sad and empty and tired. 

But he does meet her eye, and she thinks that if he were human enough, he _would_ smile. It almost lurks beneath the blankness, threatening to escape. 

She bites her lip. “Can you teach me?”

“To what?”

“To handle knives the way you do.”

He shrugs. “I don’t see why not.”

Maria crosses the room and takes the one he hands her. He studies her. “How does it feel? Is it balanced?”

“Too heavy.”

He nods. “Try this one instead.”

He hands her another, this one with a shorter blade. Maria feels it, and twists it so that it glints in the sunlight. “I like it,” she decides. 

“Good, because that knife is a part of you now. It should feel like it’s growing off of your body—”

“Like your arm?” 

He looks down with a furrowed brow, like he’d forgotten it was there at all. “I… yes.”

“Where did you get it?”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know? You can’t remember how you lost an arm and got a metal one stuck on you?”

He glares at her. “ _I don’t know.”_

Maria swallows. Bites the inside of her cheek and, instead of being scared, asks, “Can I touch it?”

“What?”

“Can I touch your arm?”

Confused, he looks from her to the arm and back again, and then jerks his chin uncertainly. Maria reaches out with her free hand and softly brushes her fingers against the metal, feeling it’s ridges and grooves. It’s surprisingly warm. She makes her fingers walk across its surface. “I like the star,” she decides, giving his shoulder a tap. 

He blinks. “The star?”

“ _Da,_ ” she nods and traces the ridges of it. “It’s pretty.”

“I… thank you.”

Maria shrugs. “The knives now? I want to see how you flip them so quickly.”

* * *

1994

When she turns twelve, she is given her very own room. 

This is partly because she is getting older—all of the older girls get their own rooms—and partly because they are getting so many new recruits that the dorms are all full up. 

So for the first time Maria curls up in a bed large enough to sleep three. She’s not cuffed to it, but the door is always locked twice from the outside by the matron and the window is barred. 

But Romanova has her hairpins, and so that night she slips inside and scurries up onto the bed. 

“You shouldn’t be in here,” Maria whispers.

“I know,” Romanova replies, curling into herself. “I just missed you.”

Maria reaches out and takes her hand. The younger girl’s eyes close. She lies very still for a long moment, and Maria just watches. Then she asks the question she has wanted to know the answer to for so long:

“What’s your real name?”

Romanova’s eyes shoot open. They are big and blue. 

“Natalia,” she whispers. “What’s yours?”

“Maria.”

_Natalia,_ Maria thinks. It’s a delicate name, a pretty one. It suits her well, especially as her lip quivers and she wraps her arms around Maria, crying quietly into the crook of her neck. 

“I don’t ever want to hurt you, Maria.”

Maria threads her fingers through Natalia’s red curls and kisses her forehead. “You won’t. I promise, you never could.”

Natalia only holds her tighter. They fall asleep like that.

* * *

Two days later, Belova comes. 

She’s shorter than Maria but taller than Natalia, and right between them in age. She is led in right as they’re breaking fast. 

“Girls,” says Madame B, with two white-knuckled bony talons on the girl’s shoulders, “This is Belova. She has just been transferred from another facility. Make her feel at home.”

Nobody moves. They are all staring at this girl, whose face is set into a perfectly impassive mask that Maria wishes she could imitate. 

Maria kicks out the empty chair opposite her and jerks her head toward it. Belova’s attention is caught by the noise and she zeroes in on Maria. 

After she sits it takes about two seconds before everything returns to normal, like a film going from pause to play; the chatter picks back up, the scraping of knives and forks against porcelain returns. 

“So you’re the boss?”

From Maria’s left hand, Natalia snorts. “ _Net,”_ she says. “ _She’s_ the boss.” 

Belova follows Natalia’s gesture and narrows her eyes at Vostokoff, who’s sitting with her new cohorts at the other end of the table. Maria has been utterly ostracised from the other girl since it was made apparent that she and Natalia were friends. They’d had a row about it, and now Vostokoff won’t speak to her; she will only look to glare. 

Which she does now, before sniffing and turning away as if the very sight of them makes her sick. 

It’s strange. When they were younger, Vostokoff was perfectly willing to subject Maria and Natalia to verbal attacks. Now they have become more subtle; her degrading comments are wrapped in sweet tones and pleasantries, and she waits to get out her aggression until they are paired against one another in combat training. 

To Maria’s surprise, Belova says, “No.”

“What?”

“No, she’s not the boss. She’s the one you want everyone to _think_ is in charge.”

Maria reveals nothing but confusion, though within she privately agrees. Lately the other girls have been looking at her with more respect, with increased wariness. 

She’s been pushing back against Vostokoff more and more. 

On the mat.

Off of it. 

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Maria says breezily, spooning marmalade onto her bread. 

“Vostokoff’s the one you want to get in with if you want to fit in,” Natalia adds. “You keep sitting with us and you’ll regret it, trust me.”

Belova’s stare is hard. “I do what I like. I sit with who I want. Besides, one look at these girls and I can tell they are all just a bunch of sheep. All you have to do is figure out how to herd them.”

Maria stiffens a little. She looks at Belova with a raised brow. “And that’s what you plan to do?”

“No,” Belova grabs an apple, “ _I_ plan to sit back and watch _you_ do all the hard work for me.”

* * *

They go to the target range that afternoon. Soldat paces behind them as they practise shooting, and takes silent note of their progress. Maria is getting better; most of her shots make it to the centre. 

Belova doesn’t miss once.

“She’s good,” Maria remarks to Soldat as she helps him clean and put away the guns. “Better than I am.”

“That’s not true.” 

“What?”

Soldat hands her a nine mil frame to polish. “It’s not true. You’re as good as her, but you miss on purpose. You don’t want to upstage Vostokoff.”

Maria rolls her shoulder. “What makes you say that?”

“I saw it.”

Before she can open her mouth and snap that he must be blind, he says, “My eyesight is just fine.”

Maria scowls. She snaps the barrel onto the frame. “What would you know about any of it? You spend most of your day locked away in that room in the basement. Why do they do that, anyway? Lock you in? You’re a teacher, not a student.”

“I… I don’t know.”

There it is again: that strange lost, confused look in his eyes. He stares down at the gun in his hands for a moment with a tilted head, like it is only occurring to him now that he is holding a weapon. Then his gaze turns onto the handler standing in the hall. 

“Soldat?”

His head snaps toward her. Maria thinks very suddenly that no, he is not a student, but in some ways he is just a child like her. He’s alone in this place, and she thinks maybe he doesn’t belong. Where did he come from, anyway?

She reaches out to put a hand on his arm. 

Soldat flinches and draws away. “Don’t.”

“I’m sorry.”

He says nothing more, and so they finish the remainder of their task in silence.

* * *

The days grow longer as spring approaches. Their breakfast time is cut in half and they are no longer allowed time to embroider. That is for children, like love and happy endings. 

Maria and Natalia train together most often. They are so close in skill, sometimes it’s hard to determine who the real winner is. Natalia says it’s who’s on top when it’s over, but Maria thinks it’s more about who has the strength leftover to keep fighting. 

Belova hovers around them like an enigmatic phantom. She makes lazy, dry comments about their terrible form, but of the three of them, she is the quickest to crack a joke. For the first time in a long time Maria finds herself passing the days with laughter instead of that coiled-up fear snake that lives in her belly. 

They trail after Soldat in-between lessons and combat sessions. Vostokoff mostly avoids them because of this; all of the other girls fear the man with the metal arm, but not Maria—and because Maria isn’t afraid, neither is Natalia. 

She pokes and prods and has a tendency to climb all over him like he’s an obstacle in a course. On good days Soldat does not seem to mind; it is as if he has no regard to, as if it never occurred to him to care about his own body enough to establish these boundaries. On bad days, Natalia is sharp enough to give him a wide berth. 

On one such good day, she and Maria find him sitting in the gardens. 

They are expansive; ten foot tall hedges, rose bushes with white and blood red buds, an entire maze that they have all memorised backwards and forewards. 

He is sitting on a stone bench staring at nothing. 

“Soldat,” Maria calls, bolder with him now. “What are you doing?”

He turns to look at her, his long hair obscuring one eye. “I needed air.”

Maria comes closer. He looks stiff like always, and sad too. She has yet to make him smile. One time Belova did, though, and Maria has quietly resented her for it ever since. 

Natalia skips ahead and plops down at Soldat’s feet. “Will you braid my hair?”

Soldat looks at her like she’s an alien. “I don’t know how.”

“Then I’ll teach you,” she retorts, and grabs his hands to guide them—but then he’s doing it all on his own, like he’s done it a thousand times before. Natalia raises an eyebrow. “How can you forget that you know something?”

“Leave him be,” Maria says. She walks cautiously behind him, studying his too-long brown hair, making sure that he sees her. When she touches it, _him,_ he doesn’t flinch away like last time. He only stills for half a second before resuming his own work. 

Maria gently rakes her fingers through his hair. It’s dry and uncared for. She works the knots out as best as she can, trying not to pull too hard, and decides she will only braid the top half of his hair—like a Norse viking from a story. 

Soldat slowly relaxes. The tension bleeds from his body. Maria experiences the opposite: a tightening of her muscles; a straightening of her spine. 

The guards patrolling the manor grounds are watching them, and they are all scowling. 

* * *

“You need to do it soon.”

Maria rolls her eyes and twists their bodies so that she is on top, yanking Belova’s arm behind her head. “No.”

Belova pushes back with all of her weight. Maria lands hard against the mat. Belova bounces off and tries to get to her feet, but Maria sweeps a leg out and knocks her down again. They roll and wrestle in a disorganised fashion. Belova hooks an arm around Maria’s throat and catches her between her thighs. “She’s getting on my nerves. If you don’t knock her down a peg now, I’ll have to, and if I do that, she might end up dead.”

Maria can’t answer. Her windpipe is being crushed: she slaps Belova’s arm. 

“What? Oh.”

The pressure is lifted. Maria coughs and elbows Belova twice in the gut. She grunts. 

“It’s not my responsibility.”

Belova gets the drop on her. She hovers over Maria, pinning her arms and legs down. “She’s an unbearable little _suka,_ ” Belova snaps. “She can’t even fight well.”

It’s true. Vostokoff hasn’t improved a lick since she’s had to resort to fighting the others instead of Maria, who had actually been a challenge for her. She’s plateauing and it’s beginning to show. Yesterday she’d gone up against Natalia, who had knocked her down flat in ten seconds. The other girls are still whispering about it in the hallways. 

Maria frees a thigh and jabs Belova in the side. They roll some more. Maria comes up straddling the other girl. She whacks her twice upside the head. “If she wants to get herself killed, then so be it. I’m not her teacher, I’m not even her friend.”

“ _Petrov.”_

“ _Belova.”_

The other girl sighs. “Fine. Draw. Get off me, I want to shower.”

“Draw? What do you mean ‘draw’? I win.”

Belova scoffs. “Please.”

“Admit it.”

“ _No.”_

“Admit it, or I’ll tell Romanova that you’re the one who stole her garrotte.”

Belova gapes. “You _wouldn’t.”_

“No? Try me.”

Belova sighs. “Fine. Whatever. _You win.”_

Maria grins and rolls off. Belova sits up and pants for a second. She is soaked in sweat; they both are. Training with Belova is actually hard sometimes. Her style is so different from what they’ve all been learning here; it’s hard to fight your own reflection, which is what it feels like when your only opponents are girls who have learned all of the same moves and techniques as you. 

“Belova.”

“What?”

“Tell me your real name.”

The other girl’s eyes widen. “What? I can’t do that!”

“Why not? Cat got your tongue?”

“It’s not allowed.”

“Who’s listening?”

“Me and you,” Belova snaps, rising. “And that’s enough.”

Maria sighs in defeat. “Clean yourself up, Belova. I’ll see you at dinner.”

“ _You_ clean yourself up,” Belova mutters, never one to be ordered around. Maria smiles to herself as the other girl goes. She rests her cheek against her arm and closes her eyes, waiting for her heartbeat to calm. 

Maybe Belova’s right. Maybe it’s time.

* * *

As it happens, Vostokoff confronts Maria first. 

They are in the commons before dinner. This is the time most girls take to catch up on reading or practice their Latin; Vostokoff normally sits in the corner like a mother hen, with her girls about her like little obedient ducklings, hanging onto her every word as she gossips about this and that. 

Today, she is sitting in Maria’s seat: the low chaise by the window. It’s raining. Maria had been looking forward to curling up there and finishing her translation of _the Metamorphosis_ _._

“What is this?” Maria asks, not angrily but more tired than anything else. It’s been a long day. Her back aches from besting Natalia in that morning’s fight. 

“Oh, you don’t like it when someone steals your accustomed place, I see.” Vostokoff closes the book she had been reading from under her breath in well practised Mandarin. “Annoying, isn’t it?”

The other girls are starting to look over. The last thing Maria wants just now is a spectacle. She makes to turn around and walk away, but Vostokoff vaults to her feet. “I know how you got here!” she snaps. 

Maria frowns. “What?”

“I read your file,” Vostokoff hisses. “You’re not like the rest of us. You’re not here to serve your country, are you? You’re here because you have no choice! Because you were sold like cattle after you—”

Maria slaps her. It’s all she can think to do. She sees only red, and there is a sick feeling churning in her belly slow and cold like butter, and the ringing is back, and her heart is pounding.

“What gives you the right?” she seethes. “You think you own this place? You think _any_ of these girls would miss you if you weren’t here?”

Vostokoff rubs her cheek. She cares less about the pain and more about the words. “Was that a threat?”

Maria steps closer. “What do you think?”

Then all at once they’re fighting. The other girls shoot to their feet as Vostokoff and Maria stumble through the room. Vostokoff is far from sloppy, but she doesn’t have the same coordination as Maria; she doesn’t fight dirty like Maria can. Vostokoff plays by the rules. She does exactly what is expected of her. Nothing more, which is her damnation. 

Blows and parries. Kicks and scratches. Maria is shoved into a wall. Vostokoff gets her head smacked against a table. A foot collides with Maria’s kidney. Vostokoff gets a cut on her forehead from broken glass. 

No one interferes. No one tries to pull either girl off the other. Maybe they are too afraid, or maybe too invested in the outcome. 

But somehow, Vostokoff ends up on top, with her pale white hands crushing Maria’s throat. It hurts so much more than Belova’s chokehold last week. She sees black and red, and her whole head is screaming. 

Vostokoff leans close and speaks quietly, a hot whisper against the flesh of Maria’s ear: “You killed him. That first night you were crying for him like a little baby, but you’re the one who murdered your own grandfather. You make me _sick._ ”

Maria’s scream is silent, but Vostokoff’s isn’t; she shrieks as she’s thrown backward, not into the wall but through the window. 

Maria hadn’t kicked. She hadn’t pushed or shoved. She’s still hacking and stunned when four hands grab her roughly by both arms and drag her to her feet. 

They run, stumbling. Maria is blind, or maybe so disoriented she simply forgets to register the journey from the commons to the dance studio. 

But the next thing she knows she’s on the floor, bloody hands braces against the polished wood floor, staring at her own haggard face in the mirror. 

“ _What was that?!”_ Belova hisses.

Maria shakes her head. She thinks she might throw up. “I… I just wanted her to get off.”

“Oh, did you? Well, you succeeded!”

Belova begins to pace in front of her, fuming like a caged lion. Natalia, on the other hand, stares with wide eyes. There are tears in them. It scares Maria more than Belova’s rage. 

“Maria,” she whispers, quiet and terrified, “how did you do that?”

Belova pauses. Maybe it’s Natalia’s fear, or her use of Maria’s first name. Maria doesn’t know. She can’t register anything but the exhaustion and the blood dripping from her nose and the pounding in her head. It feels like it might explode inward. 

“ _Maria,”_ Natalia sobs, on her knees now, a hand on Maria’s back. “Why didn’t you tell me? Why are you so—so _stupid_ sometimes? You should have _told me.”_

“And what good would that have done?”

Natalia shakes her head. “I would have known. I could have helped you. I could have _stopped you.”_

“You should have stopped me anyway.”

Her sister swallows. “They might cut you from the program for this.”

“Bullshit,” Belova snaps. “I killed a girl in my last house and they promoted me. You’ve just done exactly what they wanted.”

_(Don’t let them control you._ )

The world goes black.

* * *

When she wakes again, the others are gone. 

Maria blinks the sleep from her eyes and tries to raise her arms to wipe it away, only to find that she can’t; they’ve been cuffed to the infirmary bed within which she lays. Maria stares. She’d gotten used to sleeping without them. 

“They were worried that you might present hostile behaviors when you woke up,” says a rough voice. 

“Soldat,” Maria croaks, finding him standing alone in the corner, a dark stone sentry. “Is she dead?”

“No. A broken leg, a cracked skull, a fractured clavicle. Oh, and four fractured ribs. That’s about the worst of it.”

“But she’ll live.”

“Yes.”

Soldat fills her a glass of water. He helps her sit up and holds it to her lips. Maria strains to swallow, but it helps. That, and the knowledge that she hasn’t yet committed _another_ murder.

“I was right.”

Maria looks up. “What?”

“I knew that you could beat her.”

She doesn’t know why, but she starts to laugh. She feels delirious, drunk on the fact that Vostokoff is still alive and swimming in whatever drugs they gave her. A low rumbling sound joins her giggles and it takes her a moment to realise that Soldat is laughing, too. 

* * *

They unchain her that evening, when they are satisfied that she has ‘regained her stability’, as Madame B puts it. She looks quite flustered and keeps smoothing her matron’s skirt, and eyeing Maria like she is one of the ticking bombs they dissemble in class. 

Maria asks after Vostokoff again. 

“She will be fine,” Madame B assures as they walk down the hallway. “Thought it will be several weeks before she returns to the programme.”

“So she won’t be cut?”

“No,” Madame B says, and Maria doesn’t know whether to be relieved or disappointed. She feels a strange mix of both. 

“You are to stay in your room for the rest of the night,” the matron orders. “You will rejoin the others in the morning and go about your duties as usual. Understood?”

“ _Da, Missis.”_

And so Madame B locks her in. Maria hovers near her window for a minute, staring out at the snow falling in gentle flurries, just visible through the slats in the bars. For hours she sits on the floor there, studying the Latin she never got to finish the day before, and it is not until her eyes begin to strain and she is forced to light the oil lamp on her bedside table that Natalia comes. 

There is the tell-tale sound of a hairpin in the lock, and then come soundless motions; Natalia slips inside and shuts the door behind her. She stands against it. 

They stare at each other for a moment. 

Then Natalia breathes sharply, having forgotten to for too long. “You scared me,” she whispers.

Maria reaches out. It’s all she can think to do, but apparently it’s the right thing, because Natalia rushes for her. Pale, skinny arms wrap around Maria’s body and hold her tight. Natalia smells like the lemongrass soap from the baths. 

“I’m sorry,” Maria whispers, meaning it. Her eyes burn as she thinks of how it must have looked, of what could have happened if Vostokoff had died instead of just breaking a few bones. “I’m so _sorry,_ Nat.”

Her sister stills a little and then draws back, wiping her runny nose on the back of her hand. “I—I brought this for you,” she says, pulling a newspaper wrapped treat from the pocket of her robe. 

“A lemon cake?” Maria says wonderingly. 

“It was the last one,” Natalia adds for good measure. 

They’re her favourites, and Maria’s too, which makes it extra special. Plus Inna rarely makes them. Maria doesn’t know how to express the gratitude she feels just then, other than to plant a kiss on Natalia’s forehead, the way Deda used to for her when he was still alive. 

“We’ll split it,” she decides, and Natalia brightens considerably. 

They break it apart and eat it in little tiny pieces to savour the taste. Sucking her thumb Maria asks, “What are they saying about me?”

“That you’re a freak,” Natalia replies swiftly. “They’re terrified of you. But hey, don’t be upset—this is good for us. If they’re afraid they’ll leave us alone.”

Maria still feels sick and upset. “I didn’t want anyone to know.”

“How long have _you_ known?” Natalia asks in a quiet, tentative voice.

“Since before I came here.”

“Has it… happened any? Besides yesterday, I mean.”

Maria shakes her head. “No, not once. I thought maybe… I don’t know. I thought it might have gone away, or that maybe it was just a one time fluke. It only happens when I get scared.”

Natalia scoots forward and reaches out, touching the still-healing necklace of bruises around Maria’s neck. “She was going to kill you.”

“Yes,” Maria agrees quietly. “And I was going to kill her back.”

“No,” Natalia snaps. “You wouldn’t have. I know you.”

“Nat—”

“You’re _good,_ ” Natalia insists. “You’re not like the rest of them.”

Maria grabs her arm and pushes it down. “We are _all the same,_ Natalia. We are all here to be killers, to be liars, to be spies. None of us are _good._ No matter what, the day will come when they give us a man to shoot instead of a target. Do you understand that? They’re going to make murderers of us _no matter what.”_

Natalia starts to cry again. “But I don’t want—”

“Then they’ll kill _you,”_ Maria snaps. “Or cut off your tongue and sell you off to be a whore. You know that. It’s happened before, with Fedorov and Popov. You remember the blood—”

“Stop it!” 

Maria grabs the back of her neck and puts their foreheads together. “Just because you don’t like something doesn’t mean it’s not true! I need you to be _strong_ for me, do you understand? I need you to _survive_. If I lose you, I have no one, so _please_ —when they point, you shoot.”

It’s part of the graduation ceremony. Maria remembers from the group of girls that had been here before them, the ones who completed the programme; she remembers the sound of gunfire, and the heavy thuds of the bodies as they hit the floor. And she remembers Popov, small and weak and thin, and all that blood staining the marble of the studio. How pale and quiet she had been as they escorted her off the grounds, a small rucksack tucked under her arms. Soldat had explained what was to happen to her, and Maria had not stopped shaking for two hours. 

She can’t let the same thing happen to her little sister. She _can’t._

Thank God, Natalia says, “I promise.”

Maria nods. “Good.” She lets go and wipes Natalia’s tears away for her, and lets her have the rest of the cake. Then she picks her Latin book back up and reads from it in clumsy, halting sentences until Natalia falls asleep with her head in Maria’s lap. 

* * *

For a week, Maria is avoided like she’s a plague carrier. The girls duck their heads and scurry past in the hallways, and at breakfast, Maria is forced to sandwich between Belova and Natalia so as not to endure the unbearable inch-by-inch scooting away of a chair. 

But then one morning she wakes early to find that someone has slipped a note through the crack beneath her door. 

It is written in elegant hand. Her name, PETROV, is scrawled on the front of a cream coloured envelope. Inside are the words: _Meet me in the dance studio at 3PM. -V_

“ _Blyad’,_ ” Maria whispers. 

* * *

It could be a trap, but Maria still goes alone anyway. She expects to find Vostokoff flanked, but instead, she is on her own as well. 

“I didn’t know you could do that,” Vostokoff says flatly, after Maria closes the door behind her. “It wasn’t in the file.”

The other girl’s face is bruised. Her arm is in a sling and her leg in a cast. She stands in the middle of the room, reflected thrice more in each of the mirrors.

Maria tilts her head. “Would you have done it otherwise?”

“Probably not,” Vostokoff replies. “I’m not an idiot.”

“Why do it at all? What is it about _me_ that makes you so angry?!”

“You were supposed to be my friend!” Vostokoff explodes. “Instead you chose that little _freak_ Romanova!” 

“You’re just jealous because she’s _better than you!”_ Maria snaps. 

“She is not!”

Maria rolls her eyes with a scoff. “Do you want to know what I think? I think you’re a _coward._ I could have put you in your place a thousand times by now, but I let you walk around this manor like you owned it. _Not anymore._ You know what I am now. You know what I’m capable of. If you cross me again, if you touch so much as a _hair_ on Romanova’s head, next time I won’t hold back.”

She turns to leave, but as she goes, Vostokoff calls, “I know your name!”

Maria, one hand on the door handle, snaps, “And I know yours, Melina.”

She stays just long enough to watch Vostokoff’s reflection drain of all colour. Then she storms out. 

* * *

“I’m the second daughter of Russian royalty,” Natalia says. “My family sent me here to serve my country, seeing as I would be of no use to them otherwise. I’m a year older than everyone believes.”

Maria slaps her open palm. “You blinked.”

“I _didn’t.”_

“Did so. My turn.”

Natalia groans. “God, fine. But do it in an English accent, I like the way they sound.”

Maria complies, because she does too, and she’s good at that accent besides. “My mother was a teacher. My father worked in a coal mine. I’m a penniless orphan from Oxford—”

The switch hits her wrist with a sharp sting. “There are no coal mines in Oxford.”

Maria grins. “ _Durham,_ ” she corrects. “They died in a fire when I was three.”

“Boring,” Natalia says. “Belova! Come over here!”

Belova drags her feet but joins them. They are all packed in a room together, separated into pairs. They’ve been playing the game of faces for twenty minutes now. Maria used to think it fun until she learned all of Natalia’s ticks. 

She doesn’t know Belova’s, so her interest peaks as the two sit across from one another. 

“My parents sold me for money. They were drug addicts.”

“That’s Vostokoff’s story,” Maria points out. 

Belova snorts. “She would. _God,_ fine. My name is Rita Michaels, I’m from Iowa. I was raised on a farm with my parents, three sisters, and our pet cat, Mittens—”

Natalia slaps her palm. 

“Ow!” Belova snaps. “What was that for? I was totally believable!” 

She’s still speaking in an American accent. Maria starts to laugh while Natalia says simply, “That’s a stupid name for a cat.”

“Give me a better one, then!”

Natalia thinks. “Mary,” she decides. 

Maria stops laughing. Belova doesn’t notice. She keeps going. “Our stupid pet cat, Mary.”

“What kind of a cat was he?”

“A calico with a broken tail.”

“Too specific,” Maria butts in. “Don’t say something like that unless someone asks.” 

Belova rolls her neck. “I hate this game. I’m pants at it.”

Natalia slaps her again. “Iowans don’t say ‘pants’, they say ‘bad’.”

“Oh, go to hell!”

“Shut up and keep talking. Tell me about your Mama.” 

“She had blonde hair like me, and brown eyes too. Everyone always said we looked alike. But she never got angry, and I’m _always_ angry. One time I set my Papa’s corn fields on fire because he made me so mad, and another time I let all the cows loose. He made me wrangle them all up on my own as punishment.”

Another slap. 

“Ow! What was that for this time?”

Natalia smirks. “I don’t _have_ to have a reason to hit you, Belova.”

Just like that, they’re wrestling. 

* * *

Soldat has moments, more and more lately, where he seems almost like a real person. 

It’s like he falls back into his own body; for just a few moments there will be light in his eyes, and maybe he’ll smile or laugh or make some dry remark that has them wide eyed with shock. 

But no matter what, he’s uncomfortable. The guards watch his every move. He shifts constantly like his body is too big for him, and rolls the shoulder of his metal arm as if to shake the sleep from it, before remembering the limb is gone. 

One day they set up the projector in the commons and show the same film they always do: old black and white reels of Captain America wreaking havoc on their lands; killing Soviet soldiers, bashing skulls in with his shield, beating them to death with his bare fists. “This man is the chosen figurehead of our enemies,” the narrator says, voice crackling through the old speakers. “A brutal savage. The Americans thrive off of greed and blood. They impoverish their own citizens. They created Steve Rogers through illegal experimentation. It is your job to stop them from creating worse things; your job to dismantle them from the inside; to slip amongst them undetected and destroy their country, brick by brick.”

Natalia is mouthing the words while making silly faces. Maria is mid laugh when she sees it: 

Him. 

Soldat. 

His face is blurry, but she’s seen it enough to recognise him. He stands at Captain America’s right side—leaner, hair cropped, cleanly shaven. Unrecognisable to the others and only visible for a split second, but it’s enough for Maria _._

She rounds, expecting to see him by the door where he always stands when they show this stupid movie, but he’s not there. 

Natalia frowns. “What is it?”

“Nothing,” Maria hisses to Natalia. “Cover for me, would you?”

By now, Maria has figured out how to slip out of a room without being noticed. She does it with ease now, slipping into one of the servant passages and coming out near the kitchens. She creeps down to where she knows she can find him.

His bedroom is small, stowed away near where the servants sleep. Maria has never been near it, much less inside of it, but she’s seen him come from this way before.

Sure enough, the door is cracked. Faint yellow light bleeds through. Maria peeks inside, spying him bent over on the bed, staring at the stained wall opposite him. His eyes are clouded. 

“Soldat?” She whispers. 

He raises his head slowly. His stare is blank and haunting. 

Maria steps into the room. 

It’s a mistake. 

In no time he’s flying at her. There are no words: just mechanical, brutal movements. She is ripped inside all the way and slammed against the concrete wall. His metal arm is around her throat, crushing, closing, and the fear comes rushing up like an ocean wave—

Maria falls to the floor, coughing and dry heaving. He is only six feet away for the room is tiny, no larger than a prison cell and no different either. He is shaking, sobbing, confused. 

Maria crawls to him. He tries to push her away but she won’t have it. She’s crying too, and it takes her a minute to realise that she’s been calling him ‘Papa,’—over and over again, ‘it’s okay, Papa, I’m okay, Papa please’. 

“I’m sorry,” he sobs. “I’m sorry, I’m so fucking sorry, Becca. Please, I’m _sorry,_ I’m sorry.”

He’s holding her, rocking her back and forth in his arms, his words wet and desperate. Maria doesn’t know who Becca is, but she holds him tighter anyway, buries her face in his neck and finds a comfort there she doesn’t think she’s ever known. She feels safe, and she decides that she would die for him, kill for him; that no one is allowed to hurt him, that he is her home. She will protect him and he’ll be okay, they both will.

She doesn’t realise she’s saying it all out loud, maybe because her voice is so thin it can barely be heard at all. But maybe he does hear, because he kisses her forehead, once, twice, three times, his stubble scratching the top of her head. 

They stay like that for a long time, too afraid to let go. But eventually Maria pulls back. She stares at the cracked wall above their heads and wipes her cheeks. “Are you hurt?”

“No,” he replies roughly. “What about you?”

Maria shrugs. It’s nothing she’s not used to by now. She’s more worried about him, anyway. “Who is Becca?”

Soldat is lying this time when he says, “I don’t know,” but Maria will let him have it. She’ll let him keep that secret because it clearly means so much to him. 

“Petrov—”

“Maria,” she corrects. “My name is Maria.”

He sighs. “I’m not supposed to know that.”

“I don’t care. I want you to. You mean more to me than—than the rest of the trainers. You’re not bad like them.”

“You’d be surprised, kid.”

Something’s happened to his voice now; it’s taken on a strange lilt. _New York,_ she thinks. _Cagney._

Maria puts her hands on either side of his face. She makes him look up. “The things they make us do don’t define us. We’re not who they make us, do you understand? They can change the way we behave, the way we wear our faces, the way we speak—but they can’t take what’s underneath. It doesn’t _belong_ to them. Whoever you are or were before you came here, that person was real. No matter what they tell you. _Ladno?”_

“Maria—”

“Just say okay.”

He sighs. “Goddamn it. _Okay.”_

* * *

Things are different after that. _Soldat_ is different. It’s in his eyes, in his voice. He’s awake. 

And he’s good at hiding it, too. He acts just as sullen and stiff as before in front of everyone else. It’s only when they’re alone with him—in private training sessions, or organising the armoury, or even the rare occasions when he drops in to watch them rehearse ballet—that he starts talking in that warm Brooklyn voice. His whole face lights up. He starts smiling more. He lets them braid his hair more often and Maria starts to cover up the little patches on his scalp with flowers from the gardens. 

“It’s because you’re always on edge,” Belova tells him one day, when he feels the spot Maria had pointed out. “This one girl in my last unit had them even worse than you—half her hair was gone by the time we were ten. They had to kick her from the programme. Too ugly to be a spy.”

Natalia reaches out and whacks Belova. “What’s wrong with you?!” she hisses. 

“What? I’m just being honest. Besides, like I said, his are tiny.”

Maria rolls her eyes as they continue to bicker. “They don’t really let you wash much, do they?” she asks him quietly. 

Soldat shrugs. “They hose me down, give me a bar of soap. Better than nothing.”

_Like a dog,_ Maria thinks, disgusted. She leans down to kiss the top of his head. “You deserve better.”

A shrug. “It is what it is—hey! Get off your sister, Natalia.”

Natalia growls at Belova, who’s beneath her with her arms pinned down. “She pulled my hair.”

Belova cackles. “You deserved it!” Then one hand is ripped free and she yanks at Natalia’s hair again—right in the spot that makes Nat yelp like a kicked puppy. 

“Cow!”

“Baby!”

Natalia starts to hock her spit back. Belova yelps and wriggles completely free, but Natalia holds on. She has a good grip and a few inches of saliva going, right up until Soldat yanks her off and throws her over his shoulder. “Alright, spitfire, that’s enough.”

“She’s _evil!”_

“So are you!” Belova snaps, still on the floor. 

“You’re both idiots,” Maria stares flatly. “Come on, we have sword fighting with Alexi.”

Natalia wipes her chin. Miserably she asks Soldat, “Can I be put down now?”

“You’re not gonna bite her, are you?”

“... _No.”_

Belova’s eyes widen. “Don’t! She’s going to bite!”

“I’m _not_ going to bite!”

“You’re a rabid beast!”

“And you’re a dirty little monster!”

Maria starts to laugh. She can’t help it. Soldat is, too; even harder when Natalia starts to kick and claw at him to get to Belova. By the time they get to training, Belova’s braid has come all undone and Natalia is sporting a new bruise under her eye. 

* * *

Later, Maria is in her bedroom when the telltale sound of the lock being picked causes her ears to perk up.

Only this time, it’s not Natalia. 

Belova hovers in the doorway for a beat. Maria opens her mouth to say something, thinks better of it, and jerks her chin instead. The other girl slips inside and closes the door. 

“I want to tell you.”

“What?”

“Everything.”

“What do you mean, ‘everything’?”

Belova’s reply is to scurry across the room and jump up onto Maria’s bed. She wriggles between her knees and winds her arms around Maria’s torso. Her soap is the same as the one they all use, but there is something sweeter underneath it, something so distinctly _Belova_ it makes Maria’s head spin. She winds her fingers through the other girl’s still-ruined hair and waits. 

“I was the best where I came from,” Belova whispers after a while. “It was colder there, and there were even less of us. Then these men came for me one day, and I thought they were going to kill me or drag me out into the snow and make me find my way back, but instead they stuffed me in the back of a car and they… destroyed everything else. Burned it to the ground, with everyone still inside.”

Maria’s stomach drops. “Why would they do that?”

“I don’t know.”

“Was it far? This place you came from?”

“No,” Belova says. “I was in the car for two days, I think. We barely stopped. I thought… I thought before then that I was brave. That I could handle anything. But I was so fucking _scared,_ Petrov.”

“ _Maria.”_

There is a pause. Then, “Yelena.”

“What?”

“That’s my name, stupid.”

“Oh.” Maria swallows thickly. “It’s pretty.”

“Yes, I know.”

Maria can’t help laughing. Yelena laughs too. She wriggles even closer. “Can I sleep here?”

“You’d better,” Maria replies. “But Natalia will probably be here soon.”

“That’s okay. I’m not really mad at her. Do you think she’s really mad at me?”

Maria says no, but she might as well have not said anything at all because it’s not ten seconds later that the door is opening again. Natalia blinks at them both once and then wastes no time in curling up with them. They fit nicely together, Maria thinks. Like a family. 

  
  


* * *

  
1995

  
  


“You’re jumping too fast.”

Maria yelps. Then she slips her mask on; marble, hard, and glares at Soldat. “As if you could do better.”

He smiles. “No. Definitely not.”

Maria returns her attention to the scrape on her knee. She’d fallen while skating and now her tights are torn and there is blood on the ice. For six weeks she’s been trying to pull off a triple axel, and not once has she succeeded. 

Soldat steps onto the rink, still in his boots, and calmly helps her to stand. “Come on, I’ll patch you up.”

Soldat leads her over to one of the benches by the rink. Maria props up her bleeding knee while he procures one of the first aid kits kept close by in case of accidents such as this one. 

“You’re good,” Soldat tells her some time later, after he’s begun cleaning her wound. 

“Not good enough,” she replies dryly.

He smirks a little. “No, maybe not.”

Maria pops him in the arm. Soldat laughs. She forgets to be mad after that. 

When he’s done, Soldat fishes a pack of cigarettes from the pockets of his cargo pants. He’s likely not supposed to have them, but the guards never stop him from smoking—probably because they all smoke, too. Maria watches him pull one out and asks, “Why do you write on them?”

Soldat shrugs. “Old habit, I guess.”

“From when?”

His face scrunches up. He doesn’t know. Maria saves him from saying so. “Can I try one?”

A shrug. “Don’t see why not.”

This one reads _Solnechnyy svet,_ his nickname for Yelena. He lights it for her. Maria sucks in a sharp, little breath and ends up doubled over in a coughing fit. Her chest burns. Soldat laughs again. “Thought you were tougher than that, all-spice.”

All-spice, spitfire, sunshine. He’s branded them all with little terms of endearment. 

“I _am_ tough,” she protests, and takes another drag just to prove it. 

It goes no better. Soldat shakes his head and keeps smoking his, looking like he was born to do it, unlike her. They don’t like the girls smoking because they want them in peak physical shape; rules like that have yet to stop Yelena from bribing the guards for the occasional bottle of vodka, though. 

It’s right then that the doors to the rink burst open and six guards, all armed of course, march in. Turgenev is at their head. He’s been here as long as Maria has, and he has never warmed to her. He’s hard on all of the girls, but particularly on Soldat. She hates him for it. 

“Drop that,” Soldat says quickly of the cigarette. Maria complies and he quickly scuffs it under his heavy combat boot. 

“What the hell are you doing here?” He snaps at her. “It’s nine. You’re meant to be in commons with the others.”

“I needed to clear my head,” Maria retorts.

“Get up,” he says. “Or I’ll make sure that Madame B is told to punish you.”

Maria glares. “What is it your business, anyway? We’re just sitting.”

“Soldat is to come with us. This is the last you will see of him.”

Maria’s eyes widen. Her heart drops into her stomach as Turgenev grins in a sick, satisfied manner. “What do you mean?”

“What I said,” he snaps. “Sidorov, handle her. The rest of you, grab the Asset.”

For a split second Maria is paralysed. Something strange happens with time: it slows, and she can see everything at once—the men advancing, Soldat’s body stiffening and his metal fist clenching, and Sidorov reaching for her arm. 

Her eyes meet Soldat’s. 

Maria moves without thinking. Sidorov’s death is quick: the edge of her skate slitting into his carotid artery, a spurt of hot red blood. She goes for the next one in a similar fashion, letting years of training do the work for her. She’s on autopilot. There will be no mercy this time; these men are not her sisters, they are not her friends. She has been taught how to kill a thousand and one different ways, most with her body, and the methods don’t fail her now.

She breaks one handler’s neck with a twist of her thighs and somersaults to the floor, snatching a sheathed knife from the holster on Turgenev’s calf and burying it in his upper thigh. He goes down. She spits in his face for smirking, for finding amusement in the prospect of stealing her family away. 

Soldat is moving too. He’s breaking bones and arms and skulls. He gets ahold of a gun and starts shooting. It seems like a good idea, so she does the same.

But more keep coming, and coming, flooding through the doors to surround them. She hadn’t even _realised_ there were this many: faceless men that patrol the hallways, that stand outside the property and pace its length all day long. 

They tase Soldat. He goes down but gets back up. They shoot him. He keeps moving. 

But then, over the loudspeakers: _Longing, rusted, furnace, daybreak, seventeen, benign, nine, homecoming, one, freight car._

Soldat falls. His face is blank. A handler grabs him by the root of his hair and jerks his head back. “Status?”

“Ready to comply,” Soldat rasps. 

“No,” Maria hisses. “ _No! You bastards! You sons of bitches! Rot in hell!”_

She’s screaming but there’s an arm around her waist. She’s so stunned, so angry, she can’t even remember to fight. 

And he’s being dragged away too; hauled to his feet and handcuffed, as docile as a lamb. 

“ _Soldat! Papa!”_

Something collides with the right side of Maria’s skull. The world goes dark. 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> trigger warnings: mild mentions of non-consensual touching—doesn’t go into extreme detail. I did my best to make anything uncomfy very vague. as we all know mary hasn’t had an easy life but yeah i tried gloss over the worst parts.

  
For two days she sits alone in the dark. 

Then Natalia comes. 

They toss her inside like a rag doll and slam the door shut behind her. There’s the tell-tale screech of the bar being dropped so they can’t get out. Maria watches and listens with little interest. 

Natalia kneels beside her. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” she rasps. Her throat is dry. She’s barely had any water or food for forty-eight hours, and she doesn’t want Natalia to see her like this. She pushes away the warm hands that reach for her. “Don’t.”

“They haven’t treated you?”

“They put a bandage on my head,” Maria admits. “Hasn’t been changed. Probably infected.”

“Where is it?”

“Natalia—”

The hands are back, raking gently through her hair and slowly detangling the knots. Natalia starts to hum something—a song Maria vaguely recognises but isn’t quite able to place. She can’t help relaxing to the sound of it, and to the feeling of Nat’s gentle touch. It’s so familiar: like they could be sleeping in her bed on the third floor rather than locked inside this damp cell. 

“He’s gone,” Natalia says after a minute. 

Maria had figured, but _knowing_ is different. Everything feels rotten inside and out. She starts to wonder what the point is to any of this, anyway. What is she doing here if not saving Soldat little by little?

Because she realises now that for the last few years, that’s been her only hope. To help him find old pieces of his puzzle life; to give him new ones that fill the gaps he can’t on his own. 

“They want to know if he told you anything. I don’t know exactly what, but if you tell _me_ , maybe we can figure it out together—”

With a burst of strength that stems from pure rage, Maria twists her body and uses the momentum to knock Natalia onto her back. She looms over her sister, seething. 

“Maria—”

“So they sent you here to wheedle it out of me?” 

“Wheedle _what_ out of you?”

“Exactly,” Maria hisses. “I don’t fucking know. Soldat didn’t tell me shit, you understand? There wasn’t anything _to_ tell! He was all messed up in the head and you _know_ that, and you have the audacity to slither in here like some snake in search of a rat—”

“I’m just doing what you _told me to do!”_ Natalia snaps. “They point, I shoot, right? That’s what you said, isn’t it? Well they pointed. Now _get off._ You’re hurting me.”

Maria hesitates for a second before complying. She fumes, tired again, lightheaded from exertion. “Will they believe me? That I don’t know anything?”

“They believed me.”

“You’re better at lying than I am.”

“That’s true,” Natalia says, too quickly. Maria socks her. “What?! We both know it!”

“Should I make something up, you think?”

“No. They already know everything about him. If you made it up, they’d know too.”

“Think it’s something to do with his past?”

Maria doesn’t need light to see the way Natalia’s eyebrow raises. “So you _do_ know something.”

“I don’t know anything, I already said that. Except… he’s a lot younger than he should be, for someone who was old enough to fight in World War Two.”

A pause. Then, 

“ _What?”_

“I don’t know the specifics. I just know I saw him on that stupid tape they play. Guess they didn’t realise he was in it. Anyway, I never asked—”

“You _never asked?!_ Why not?!”

“It’s his private business,” Maria snaps. “And besides, I’d wager you twenty rubles he doesn’t know any more about it than I do. You saw the way he’d get; all confused when we asked things, like where he came from or who he was before this. He didn’t _know.”_

Natalia sighs and rests against the wall, so Maria follows suit. “It’s already not the same without him. All of the girls noticed. Some of them looked so happy about it and I just wanted to punch them in their stupid faces. It’s a miracle Yelena held back.”

“How is she?”

“Pissed, but what can she do? What can _any_ of us do? He’s gone and that’s that.”

Maria hates it, but she’s right. The knowledge is worse than swallowing a sour lemon. 

But she still says, “I’m going to find him again one day,” and it’s a promise she’ll never let go of.

* * *

Two days after that, they release her. 

Natalia had ended up testifying on Maria’s behalf, promising that neither of them knew anything and didn’t want to cause any more trouble than they already had. In reprimand for killing five armed guards, Maria has her free time revoked. She is to practise and train from dawn til dusk and eat every meal alone in her room. 

It’s meant to be a punishment, but it actually proves to be somewhat of a blessing. She doesn’t have to endure the stares and whispers of the other girls, and it turns out that when she’s not babysitting Nat and Yelena in class, her academic performance improves drastically. 

The physical aspect of things is quite different. Her knee is still busted from the fall in the ice rink. Pirouettes hurt but Madame B makes her do them anyway over and over again, correcting her form, her posture. _Pliés_ are much worse; she is told to do fifty repetitions per hour, to practise her _chassés_ and _arabesques,_ to perfect her _grande jeté._ Upon completion of these tasks her punishment will finally be over. 

So for two weeks she spins and leaps and bends and keeps falling. Madame B has no remorse. She is expressionless as she watches Maria like a hawk from the corner, only looking away to check her pocket watch. At precisely six in the evening every day, she announces that they will go to the kitchens for supper. Maria is served what’s leftover from dinner. It’s always cold, but she doesn’t care. She’s always ravenous. 

A month passes. Maria feels like a porcelain doll, all hollow on the inside. She feels like a failure for losing Soldat, and she feels ashamed because she can’t perfect her form. Her stupid knee keeps popping and grinding, but she doesn’t say anything for fear of what the response will be. 

One morning as she stands at barre and does her stretches, Madame B speaks. “I have prepared some choreography for you,” she announces. “You will practise this for three days and perform it in front of the others. If you do well, you may join them after for the Victory Day feast. Understood?”

Maria nods yes and takes the paper where the moves are written and illustrated. Madame B has perfect handwriting. It is easy to read but harder to execute.

* * *

Three days come and go, and by the end of the third she is standing in front of them all moving her body on autopilot. The routine is ingrained by now. She’s done nothing else for the past seventy-two hours; Maria isn’t sure her body remembers how to do anything but the routine. She wonders, will she be forced to keep dancing for the rest of eternity like in that old fable? 

Suddenly it’s over. 

Silence, and then: 

Applause. “Very good, Maria,” adds Madame B. 

Maria almost falls to the floor with relief.

* * *

1998

“Did you see the new recruits?”

“I did. They look like they can’t be more than two feet tall. Were we that small when we came here?”

“Great chubby little lumps of girls,” Yelena remarks with a laugh. “They’re too cute to be spies.”

Maria rolls her eyes at their chatter over the comms and keeps walking. The maze is mostly dark, awash with red from the low lights that run along the ground. There are mirrors around almost every corner. They’ve been stuck in here for ten minutes so far and her sisters have decided to gossip rather than solve the damn thing. 

“You know we’re being timed, right?”

“Always such a goody-two-shoes,” Nat teases. “What are you worried for, anyway? Vostokoff took three hours to find her way out. We’ve got plenty of time.”

“I want to do better,” Maria says. 

“You will.”

“I _mean,_ I want to mortally embarrass her with how well I do. I can’t do that if my teammates are too busy deciding which recruit to adopt.”

Yelena scoffs. “No one is adopting anyone,” she says matter-of-factly. “Black Widows aren’t meant to be mothers.”

Natalia falls silent at that. Maria notices, and she almost wishes she were with her sister to offer some kind of comfort. She knows that deep down it’s all Natalia’s really wanted; she would rather have played with dolls than knives, would rather have learned to cook than to kill. They don’t talk about it much—just sparing moments, dangerous words slicing through the dark of night; whispers of betrayal, traitorous ideas they can’t even tell Yelena about. 

Maria’s musings are interrupted with the sound of gunfire. “Target one is down,” Natalia reports, which means she’s just shot the head off a mannequin. “Approaching sector four.”

“Sector seven is clear,” Maria replies as she turns a corner. She sees herself in the mirror down the long narrow hall: lean, lithe, hollow cheeks and tightly braided hair, just the way Madame B likes it. She’s shot up at least a foot since that day they took Soldat, but hasn’t grown much in the last six months or so. Natalia keeps teasing her about how short she is, despite the fact that the other girl hasn’t been able to pass five foot one since she got her first period. 

More gunfire. Yelena says, “Target two is down.”

Maria clenches her jaw. She turns another corner, gun raised, and sees it: her own target. It has no face, no features, but when she pulls the trigger it is Soldat she is shooting, it is Deda. 

“Target three is down.”

“See? We’re doing better than Vostokoff already.”

Something flashes to her right and smoke blasts from a vent above. “Oh, for— _vot eto pizdets!_ Would the both of you shut up?”

* * *

They finish in half the time that it had taken Vostokoff. Madame B is clearly pleased, but instead of congratulating them she says, “Petrov, with me.”

Maria glances at the others. Yelena shrugs while Nat gives her a nervous look. Somewhat reluctant, she follows after the older woman to her private solar on the ground floor. Maria has never been here before. There is a big bay window on the left side through which she can see the grounds. The youngest girls are practising with spears in the courtyard.

Madame B shuts the door and locks it. 

“The time has come.”

“For what, Madame?”

“Your graduation ceremony.” 

Maria frowns. “I don’t understand. I’m two years younger than the oldest recruits. Vostokoff is in the lead—”

“Don’t be a fool, Petrov. You are better than all of them. We have nothing more to teach you, understand? You will only learn if you are out there in the real world fighting for your country.”

Maria’s stomach flips. She had thought—she was supposed to have more time—

“This is a _good thing,_ Petrov. Early graduation from the Black Window programme is an honour. You will be given the most prestigious of assignments.”

Maria swallows. “But I… I can’t stay? What about Romanova, or Belova—”

Madame B purses her thin lips. “They are not good enough. Not yet.”

That’s not what Maria had been trying to ask. Somehow it had never occurred to her that they would be separated; they’re all different ages, they will all graduate at different times. 

Madame B walks around her desk to put her hands on Maria’s shoulders. They are calloused and wrinkled. “You have proven yourself capable, Petrov. Now is the time to serve, to bring honour. Do you remember what I said to you the first day that you came here? We wanted you. Now the world _needs_ you.”

Maria finds herself unable to meet Madame B’s eyes and instead glares at her boots. “What if I’m not as good as you think I am?”

“I’ve seen hundreds of girls in my time,” Madame B retorts fiercely, “and _none_ of them have the abilities that you do.”

“You mean my—”

“I mean the gifts we gave you,” Madame B says. She releases her hold. “That is all, Petrov. You may return to your regular duties for the rest of the day. In the morning you will have your last test and, seeing that you pass, you will undergo the necessary procedures to complete your training.”

“Procedures?” Maria hadn’t heard anything about that.

Madame B waves this off. “It’s only a few last minute touch ups. Cosmetic things, really. Just to ensure that you are perfect for what comes next, that you will never be distracted by… outside influences.”

Maria opens her mouth to ask more, but Madame B opens the door back up to signal that they’re done. 

“Good day, Petrov.”

Maria ducks her head. “Good day, Madame.”

* * *

“What did she want?”

Maria’s been doing a good job of avoiding her sisters until now. Her stomach flips with nerves at Natalia’s question, hissed across bread rolls at dinner.

“Not here,” Maria counters. “Later.”

Natalia doesn’t like it, but she doesn’t prod any more than she might normally. Maybe she can smell the sick feeling rolling off of Maria, the terror pulsating from her tummy. _I’m not ready,_ she keeps thinking. _This can’t be right._

But then one thought comes, calm and clear and louder than all the rest: 

_Soldat._

She can find him again. If he’s not dead, that is. 

It’s the only positive she can find in a sea of fear. It gets worse when Natalia finally slips into her room that night, followed closely by Yelena. 

“So?” Natalia asks expectantly. “What, did she accuse you of cheating or something?”

“She…” 

And just like that Maria chokes on the words. She can’t say them. What good is it anyway? No matter what, come tomorrow she will be gone. She might never see either of them again. 

So Maria says, “ _Da,_ but I set her straight. It’s fine. Now are you sleeping here tonight, or what?”

Natalia rolls her eyes. “If that’s all it was, then no. I’m going back to _my_ bed where it’s actually comfortable.”

Yelena snorts. “All of the beds are the same, stupid.”

“Shut up. Goodnight, Maria.”

Maria swallows the lump in her throat. “Night, Nat.”

She goes but Yelena stays, eyes narrowing as she creeps closer. “Nat knows you’re lying, but she doesn’t want to admit it. Anything that scares you is terrifying to her. And you are, aren’t you? Scared?”

“Yelena—”

“What did she say?”

“I’m leaving tomorrow.”

Yelena takes a hard step back like she’s been struck. “No,” she says, voice thick. “ _No,_ that’s not possible. You’re only sixteen—graduates are always eighteen, _always,_ those are the _rules—_ ”

Maria is off her bed and grabbing Yelena in a heartbeat. She puts her hands on the other girl’s face. “Hey, hey, look at me.”

“Those are the _rules,_ Maria—they can’t just take you away—”

“Yelena,” Maria whispers, wiping away one of her tears, “they’re not going to change their minds. There’s nothing I can do.”

“But…” Yelena shakes her head, eyes shut tight. “We were supposed to have two more years.”

“I know.”

“I don’t…” she sucks in a sharp breath. “I don’t want you to _go._ ” 

The last word comes out as a broken little sob and Maria doesn’t know what to do except hold her. She wraps her arms tight around Yelena and kisses her forehead and her cheeks, finding comfort in the giving of it: here is Yelena, real and warm and grasping her so tightly there will be marks on her back and shoulder from her nails. Before she even realises it, before she can even think, Maria is kissing her lips, too. 

They both realise it at the same time: when it’s deepened into something else and turned hungrier and the shock of heat wakes Maria up. She remembers where she is and who, and rips away sharply. 

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be.”

“Yelena… it can't be like that. You know it can’t.”

“The other girls—”

“I don’t _care_ about the other girls! I won’t do that to you and leave!”

“You’re _already leaving!”_

Maria looks away, heart pounding. “Just… you can’t tell Natalia, okay? Just let her have tonight. She’ll find out in the morning with the rest of them and I’ll already be long gone by then. The tests are early.”

Yelena rakes a hand through her hair, dishevelling her braid. “She’s not going to take it well.”

“No, she won’t.”

“She’ll want to go with you. She’d find a way to sneak into your back pocket if she could.”

Maria can’t help smiling. “I know.”

Yelena reaches out and grabs her hand. “I don’t want you to go either, Maria. You’re the only person I ever loved.”

“You love Nat.”

“I mean…” Yelena breathes shakily. “I mean _in_ love, you dummy.” 

Maria rests her forehead against Yelena’s. “Yeah,” she whispers. “I know that, too.”

* * *

They come for her before the sun has even risen. 

Maria slips out of bed and laces up her boots in the dark. She braids her hair back so there’s not a hair out of place and follows the two guards down the marble stairs to the grand hall. 

It has been cleared of all furniture save one chair, upon which sits a man. There is also a small round table where a gun is resting, waiting for her use. 

The man has a bag over his head. His hands are tied. He is wearing a wrinkled, torn up pin-striped suit. 

Madame B straightens when Maria enters. “Petrov,” she says. “Welcome to the final test. I trust it will be no trouble for you, given how many lives you have already taken. However, killing this man is different: it says that you are ready to follow orders, to kill for your country instead of yourself.”

Maria approaches warily. 

She’d told Natalia a long time ago what would happen, but living it is something else. She feels strangely numb. Her fingers are cold. For some reason the severity of it had slipped away in the night. Now there is only a twisted sort of anticipation: to end this, to move on. 

She wonders who the man is, whose face is underneath the threadbare bag, but it only takes a split second for her to decide it doesn’t matter. He probably did something awful anyway, right? Otherwise why would he be here?

Maria raises the gun. 

Before she pulls the trigger, she asks, “What’s his name?”

Madame B blinks, surprised. “Why would that matter at all?”

“It doesn’t. I just… I’d like to know.”

Madame B purses her lips. “Ivan.”

“Ivan,” Maria repeats. And isn’t that a nice bookend? Her first and her last: her two Ivans. Whether it’s true or not doesn’t matter. She’ll end this programme the way that she started it. 

Maria pulls the trigger.

* * *

Maria only has a faint recollection of what comes next. It goes something like:

Madame B congratulates her while two of the maids come in to clean up the blood. Someone takes away the gun. “You will undergo the procedures now, and after, you will meet the headmaster. Don’t be alarmed by any of it, Petrov. The doctors know exactly what they are doing.”

So she lets them take her: two women in white scrubs who lead her down a hallway and unlock doors to a wing of the manor she has never been to before. It’s clean and sterile, like the infirmary. The lights are so bright they’re blinding. 

The nurses strip away her clothes. They give her a gown to wear. One, in a voice rough from a lifetime of smoking, orders her to lie down on “that gurney right there.”

Then her friend cuffs Maria to it. She’s gentle about it, though, and even offers a small smile. 

It does nothing to calm Maria’s nerves. 

They wheel her down a hallway. The men above her are doctors, and their faces are masked, and they glance down at her with indifference. 

“What... what’s happening?”

“The procedure,” one replies. “Didn’t the matron tell you?”

“She—what are you going to do?”

“We are going to make you perfect,” the other says smoothly. “It will be painless.”

But it isn’t. 

Their gloved fingers poke and prod at her skin, feeling her sides and ribs and hips. Her body is cold and she squirms, but they press her down flat and tell her not to move. It takes five minutes for her to realise that she is being watched: there’s an observation deck above, and there are men peering down at her. They’re smoking, scowling, some are even laughing. 

At her. 

At her discomfort. At her body. 

“Stop it,” Maria begs. “Cover me up. I don’t—I don’t want to do this.”

“It is part of the programme,” one of the masked doctors says. “It’s almost over.”

The other doctor grabs a syringe off of a metal tray. He peers into it, studying its electric blue contents, and flicks the side of it. 

“Be calm,” he instructs. “This will make you strong.”

“What is it?”

“Medicine,” he replies. The needle pricks her arm. Maria hisses as the liquid is pushed into her veins. At first it’s cold, and then—

and then it _burns._

“Stop it,” she says, squirming. “It hurts, please—I don’t want it—”

It’s everywhere. It’s heat, it’s fire. She can’t see. There’s—there’s a ringing, a high pitched warning bell she hasn’t heard in years. She’s going to—god, she’s going to—

“Ten seconds,” says a doctor. “Then you can mark her.”

“ _Listen to me!”_ Maria yells, angry now. “If you don’t stop, I’m going to kill you! Do you understand me?! I’m going to fucking kill you if you don’t—”

“ _Blyad’_ ,” the doctor swears. “Just shut her up and do it now, would you?”

She’s not expecting what comes next. 

Neither are they. 

The doctor pulls a hot iron rod from seemingly nowhere—she can’t see around her, only above and to her sides, strapped down as she is; she hadn’t noticed it. The end connects with her skin and her vision whites out. 

Maria screams. 

She must black out, because when she opens her eyes the next time, they’re all dead. 

The men in the observation deck, the doctors, the nurses. There is a scalpel in the neck of one of them, and there is blood everywhere, and shattered glass. Her head is pounding. Maria sits up, confused, and finds that her wrists are no longer bound. 

Her nose is bleeding. 

“What…”

_You did this._

( _We did this.)_

Maria sucks in a sharp breath. She can hear voices and it’s all the warning she needs to _go._ Quickly she clothes herself with what she can and runs. 

She doesn’t know her way around this wing of the manor, but it doesn’t matter because they all have entrances to the garages down below. If she can get there—if she can get ahold of a car—she can… 

Do what? Go where?

( _It doesn’t matter. Run.)_

She turns corners and races down hallways, body slams into a wall and rebounds off of it, skidding in her socks. Her heart is pounding so loudly in her chest armies could march to it. 

Finally she finds what looks like a maintenance door, Maria bursts through it. A set of rickety metal stairs lead her down into a cavernous warehouse lined with cars, police vehicles, SWAT trucks, even a fucking helicopter. Whatever they need, she thinks, whatever they need to get in and out unnoticed, they have. They can be anyone, anything, whenever they want. 

Maria runs for an SUV. She’d been taught to drive at fourteen, but nowhere with traffic. She expects that thorough training would have come later. 

Still, she jumps inside and searches frantically for keys. “Come on, come on…”

Gunshots. They impact the back windshield but don’t break the glass. Maria still ducks, breathing hard—

There they are. By some fucking miracle, some twist of fate, there’s a set of keys on the floor of the car. Maria lunges for them and starts the engine. She accidentally reverses, switches gears, and peels out of the garage.

* * *

TWO WEEKS LATER 

  
  


The nearest place to her home is a little run down bar on the outskirts of town. There is a neon sign in the window that reads открытый, so Maria ducks inside as it begins to snow even harder. 

For a minute she just stands there in the entry-way on the soggy mat, shivering on the outside, empty within, as feeling slowly returns to her fingers. Then she steps deeper inside. It’s crowded with men and women alike—the women are scantly clad and sit on laps and knees, the men shout and yell at the television and each other. 

Maria makes to turn around and walk right back out the door. She would rather suffer the cold than the same fate as all of these women. But then the bartender, a rough looking woman with burnt orange hair, calls to her. “Hey! You want food?”

Maria can barely hear her over all of the yelling. She edges closer on instinct, leaning over the bar. 

“ _Borscht!”_ The woman says. “On the house, but you have to pay for room and board if you want to stay!”

“Why would I want to stay?!” Maria finds herself demanding. 

The woman looks her up and down. “You know where you are, ya? The edge of the fucking world! Every person who lives in this town is sitting right in this fucking room! You can make good money here, you know that? Good honest work for a girl like you.”

Maria’s cheeks flame. “I don’t want that.”

The woman doesn’t even blink. “So just the soup then?”

Maria wants to refuse that too, but fuck it if she isn’t starving. It’s been two days since she last ate. Anything is preferable to going another night, so she nods and accepts the bowl the woman quickly serves her. 

She finds a nice quiet corner and settles there, watching the people in the bar. The women are all older, and none of them even look uncomfortable with what they’re doing. They laugh when the men get angry and tease them, which for some reason seems to make them smile. 

It’s not the life Maria wants, but she decides offhandedly that it’s at least better than killing. 

She stays in her little alcove in the corner and goes unnoticed for a long time. At half past two, the bar closes, the men are ushered out, and the women quietly congregate at a table to smoke and drink hard liquor. 

Maria watches, mildly intrigued. 

“Sashka, can you cover for me tomorrow? I have cramps coming on.”

“Da, but you’ve got to cover for _me_ next time.”

“As if you still get a monthly, old woman.”

Sashka slaps her upside the head. “I’m only thirty-eight, you _suska._ Watch it if you want my help.”

They keep bickering with each other until the bartender finally says, “You can come out now, girl.”

Maria flushes with embarrassment. Slowly, she reveals herself to them all, heart palpitating with the fear of what they might do. Throw her out into the storm? Force her to work for them? 

The bartender shakes her head, but to Maria’s surprise she’s more amused than anything. She pours vodka into a little shot glass and slides it over. “I’m Ludmila. These are the girls. And you?”

Maria thinks quick and hard, and then says, “Natalia. Natalia Belova.”

Ludmila nods. “Nice to make your acquaintance. You want to tell me what the fuck you’re doing here past close?”

“I… I don’t have anywhere else to go.”

“So you want a room?”

“I don’t have money.”

Ludmila looks her up and down. “You could pay for it another way.”

“Ludmila!” One of the women snaps reproachfully. “She’s just a little girl!”

“Little girl?” A click of the tongue. “How old are you?”

“Sixteen.”

Ludmila looks at the woman as if to say, _I told you so._ “Old enough. But hey, I won’t force you. You can leave or you can stay.”

“ _Ludmila.”_

“You wanna leave too Sashka? Door’s that way.”

Maria looks between the two of them. Stomach sinking, she says, “I’ll stay.”

  
  


* * *

Day after day when she’s working, she thinks about the goat farm. 

It had been empty when she’d gone back. There were no more goats, and there had been no Babushka. Just a dusty old house with a broken-in ceiling and wood-rotten floors. They had creaked underfoot and Maria swears that they had spoken in the voice of her grandmother: the phantom of an old woman telling her to leave. 

Her bedroom had been replaced with a sewing room, but most of the materials were gone. In the back yard there was a grave with a poorly made crucifix protruding from the mulch, marked with a crudely carved _Ivan._

Maria had never felt so unwelcome in a place, or so strange. 

She’s not sure what she had imagined would happen upon her return. Maybe that Bab would be there, full of regret and tears; maybe she would grab Maria and apologise over and over, tell her she never would have sent her away if she had been in her right mind, that none of it had been Maria’s fault. 

But naturally she had found nothing. _Of course_ Bab is dead now. It’s been years and she’d lost the only person she loved. 

Still Maria thinks about it over and over, because it’s easier than focusing on the world around her. She fades in an out, putting on the face of Natalia Belova during the day. At night, after she’s done being the ‘Little Russian Doll,’ she thinks of nothing but her real family. 

Soldat. Yelena. Nat. 

She cries into her pillow and promises that one day, she’ll get them back. She’ll save them all. 

Eight weeks after she starts living at the brothel, a group of men come. She knows without having to ask that they aren’t like the rest of the men who frequent Ludmila’s bar: their eyes are sharp, their faces harsh and angular. They wear expensive clothes. 

These men have come for her. 

So it’s no surprise when the oldest of them zeroes in on her. “That one,” he snaps, slapping a stack of money onto the bar. “And a private room. With tea.”

“Tea?” Ludmila asks.

“Yes.”

Ludmila shakes her head. “I’m sorry, but that one is barely trained and surely too young to boot—”

“ _That one._ And some _tea.”_

* * *

They lead her up to the biggest room in the hostel. One man’s hand is pressed against her back, cold and calloused. When they are all inside, the door locks with a click that resounds in Maria’s heart.

The oldest man sits down on the edge of the bed. “Will you set the table, darling?”

He’s American, maybe sixty or so. Five foot nine, one-hundred and eighty pounds. She could take him down in five seconds flat. The others? It won’t be as easy. 

Maria does as she’s told and runs through her options. What seems safest is to go along, to plausibly deny, and let them have their way with her. Maybe when they know they’ve suitably humiliated her they’ll leave her alone. 

“Do you know why I chose you?” asks the old man. “Do you know why I’m here right now?”

“I expect to get out of the cold,” she says swiftly. 

“Come on, now, you’re smarter than that. Get over here.”

Maria sets down the water pitcher. She walks over, shaking, legs feeling like they’re made of gelatine. “I don’t understand.”

“That’s okay.” He takes her hand. Kisses her knuckles. “You will.”

And then he yanks her. Maria cries out and, startled, actually falls onto the bed. Before she can lash out and break his arm, the other four men are pinning her down. The one, the leader, begins to unbutton his shirt, and then—

Maria screams. 

She lets the fear out. The anger. The betrayal: at Bab, at Ludmila. 

The scream is silent, but glass shatters and wood creaks and when she opens her eyes again, they’re all dead.

All but one.

The quiet man who had only been watching, the only one who hadn’t touched her. Heart pounding, Maria wipes the blood from her nose and stands. 

He does too.

“Are you going to kill me?”

“Depends,” she rasps. “Were you going to fuck me?”

To her surprise, he smiles. “No, dear, I wasn’t going to do that.” 

Then he holds out his hand. 

“I’m Alexander Pierce. I believe it would be in both of our interests if you and I could have a little discussion.”

Maria stares at his hand, and then reaches out to shake it. 

“Natalia.”

He smiles and gestures smoothly toward the little table in the corner of the room. “Tea?”

* * *

Maria isn’t stupid. She knows Pierce has his own agenda, but any way out of that damn brothel and she’s going to take it. 

So she listens to him while he explains what a valuable asset she’ll be, and how he’ll treat her ‘much better than these ghastly women have’, and how America will be a much better place for her. 

“How will we get there?”

“By plane, of course,” he replies smoothly. “A private plane, not a commercial airline. No one will know you’re even there. You’ll be free to start a whole new life someday.”

Maria doubts that, but she’s not about to argue with him. He’s taking her out of here, after all, so she keeps quiet and follows him down the steps to the main bar room. It’s just Ludmila there, lazily wiping the counter with a rag until she spots them. 

“Is there a problem?”

“How much?” Pierce asks by way of an answer.

“Pardon?”

“For the room and clean up. Oh, and the girl.”

Ludmila’s eyes widen. “You can’t take—”

At her protest, the guards that had been watching the door step forward, not so casually flashing their pieces. Ludmila pales. She looks at Maria with the utmost amount of pity and whispers, “Four-thousand rubles.”

Pierce puts it on the bar. “A pleasure doing business with you, ma’am,” he says, with a smile as sharp as a knife’s edge.

He starts to usher Maria along, but Ludmila calls out: “Wait!”

They stop. Maria has to hide her surprise when the older woman shucks her coat and wraps it around Maria’s body. Suddenly she’s four again, and Bab’s wrinkled hands are fastening the buttons, pulling the rim of a woolen hat over her eyes; Ludmila’s touch is gentler, however, and lingers longer than it needs to. “Be careful,” she whispers, just to Maria. “These men will hurt you, do you understand?”

_You’re the one who sold me._ “I can take care of myself.”

Ludmila shakes her head sadly. “You think that now, but Natalia—”

“Time to go,” Pierce announces. 

With a last look, Maria withdraws from the older woman’s arms. 

_I’ll be okay,_ she promises herself. _I’ll be fine. And hey, at least I’m worth more than Vostokoff._

* * *

Maria falls asleep on the plane. 

She doesn’t remember doing so, but one minute she’s sitting alone in her seat and the next, she’s lying on her side in a bed. 

It’s not a nice bed, and it’s not a nice room, either. 

The walls are grey. The furniture is made of cheap metal. The lights overhead flicker, dangerously close to burning out. Maria lies there for a good five seconds in shock, before she rushes the door. “Hey!” She slaps her palm against the metal. “Hey, you bastards! Let me out!”

Something groans and clicks. The door opens. Two men grab her roughly by the arms and pull her out. “Walk,” one says, in a rough American accent, the barrel of his gun digging into her spine. 

Maria doesn’t much feel like getting shot, so she does as they ask, wandering through the halls until finally—

“Ah, Maria.”

The hair on the back of her neck stands up. “How did you…?”

“I think we can do away with the bullshit, sweetheart,” Pierce says, smiling. “I know exactly who you are. I know where you came from, too. What you’re hiding from… _who_ you’re hiding from.”

Maria swallows. “What do you mean?”

“Don’t play dumb.”

“Okay,” she nods. “Okay, well…”

Then she whirls, grabbing the guard’s gun with one hand before he can fire, and kneeing him in the groin at the same instant. He goes down. She uses the butt of the rifle to knock him out and kills the other guard before he can get over his shock. Two men lay at her feet. 

She turns the weapon on Pierce. 

He starts to laugh. “God, you really are as good as they said you’d be.”

“Let me go.”

“I’m afraid I can’t do that, sweetheart.”

“Stop calling me ‘sweetheart’, you stupid fuck. Let me go or I’ll paint that wall with your insides.”

“Are you sure about that?”

“Why the _hell_ wouldn’t I be sure?”

“Well, you might be able to get through the average man, but can you get through _him?”_

Pierce jerks just chin toward the door she’d come through. Maria’s stomach sinks because she _knows,_ somehow, who she’s going to find behind her. She knows exactly who is stronger than the average man; who is the one person she could never bring herself to really hurt. 

Maria turns. 

“Soldat.”

Nothing. No recognition. He stares blankly, fists curled, shoulders squared: his fighting stance. 

“It’s me,” she says, taking a step forward. 

It’s a mistake, just like it had been all those years ago; he backhands her with his metal arm and Maria crashes into the wall. He’s still on her, and she’s not stupid. She knows she can’t beat him, but she can avoid him, so she rolls between his legs and ignores the black spots dancing in her vision; disregards the rifle she’d dropped and goes for the gun clipped to the belt of the dead guard. 

He turns just as she’s got it cocked. 

“You’re not supposed to hurt your family,” she reminds him. “I think you knocked out my fucking molar.”

He blinks. “What?”

Maria shakes her head in disgust. “What the hell did they do to you?”

“We fixed him,” Pierce replies. Maria had almost forgotten about him— _almost._

She aims a bullet for Soldat’s metal shoulder. It’s been polished so it shines and she can see that smug fucker standing there with his hands in the pockets of his silk suit, like nothing is amiss. 

The bullet bounces off the surface and whizzes past his body, shattering the glass wall behind him. He ducks and whirls. 

“ _That,”_ he snaps, “was entirely uncalled for.”

“Was it?” She asks his reflection. “There was nothing wrong with Soldat. He was getting _better.”_

“Already you’re costing me fifty grand in repairs,” Pierce mutters as he dusts off his suit. “God damn it. Listen, Petrov—we don’t call him ‘Soldat’ anymore, understand? He’s the Asset now, and his cooperation is essential to the fluidity of our overarching goal. Which _means,”_ he steps around to face her, “that you need to let go of whoever it was you think you saw in him. He’s a machine, nothing more. A soldier. Isn’t that right, comrade?”

Soldat is silent. He’s staring right at her, looking right into her eyes, hulking over her while she stands on one knee with a gun pointed at his face. 

“I _said,_ isn’t that right?”

A blink. “Yes.”

“There we go.” Pierce claps him on the back and winks at her. “Still got a few kinks to work out. Might be in need of some fine tuning, but hey, even the best cars need that, am I right? Basically what I’m saying to you, Maria, is that if you don’t put that fucking gun away and stop threatening one of the most valuable tools in this facility, I’m going to have to put you in the Bad Girl Room.”

Maria’s face scrunches up. “What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”

“It’s a little isolation chamber on the third sub level—” he shakes his head. “Just put the gun down. You’re not helping anyone here.”

Maria clenches her jaw. She looks from him to Soldat and back again, before slowly lowering the weapon. Then she stands. 

“Fantastic,” he grins. “Training begins tomorrow. I’ll have you escorted back to your room so you can rest up beforehand. No funny business, understood?”

“Yes,” she spits, “ _Headmaster.”_

His smile widens. He taps his nose. “There’s a smart cookie. When’d you figure that one out?”

“About five minutes after I met you.”

A lie, but he’s too much of a numbskull to see through it. Either way he doesn’t seem to care much. “Guards!” He calls. “Take the Asset back to his room, and this one here, too. If either of them try anything, shoot them in the head.”

* * *

MOSCOW

“What is this?”

“Cigarettes,” Maria says. “They don’t let you smoke at the facility.”

“Do I like smoking?”

He asks her these questions often, as if she is some kind of leading authority on what Soldat does and doesn’t enjoy. It would be sad if it didn’t make her so angry. 

“You did,” she says. “Before.”

“Before?”

Maria doesn’t want to talk about that right now. They’re here to do a job. “Approaching drop point,” she says, glaring at the monitor on her wrist, and then the one around her ankle—which will release shockwaves if she travels beyond the approved radius, ones so powerful they’ll probably kill her. She could maybe take it off if she managed to get herself alone, but that would mean leaving Soldat. She can’t do that. 

The van skids to a halt. Maria and Soldat jump out, armed to the nines, and scan the big hotel they’ve been left at. 

“I don’t understand why we can’t just blow it up,” she mutters. “Wouldn’t that be easier? Cleaner?”

“It’s to send a message,” he says. “They want it to be messy. Those are the orders.”

Maria rolls her eyes. They slip in the back way. She shoots a bellhop in the head and steps over his dead body without blinking. They take the service elevator up to floor nine and come out in a vacant hallway. 

Distantly she can hear classical music playing, and the hum of many voices. There’s laughter and champagne bottles popping. No one hears them. No one sees them coming. 

They comb the penthouse first: Soldat kills the couple fucking in the kitchen, Maria kills a woman drinking alone on the balcony, and then they circle back around to the living area where all of the guests are gathered. 

They kick the doors in, fire their weapons until their magazines are empty, and cease fire only when the last body drops. 

Soldat reports that they’re done through the comms. Maria stares at the sea of blood and glassy, vacant eyes, broken champagne flutes, scattered diamond necklaces, stained silks and cottons. 

She feels like she’s going to be sick. 

Why did she do that? Why would she… how could she do that…? 

“Go to the rendezvous point,” Sitwell orders. 

Soldat waits for her to move first. When she doesn’t, he grabs her by the arm and leads her out. They hurry to the parking garage two blocks over and duck inside of the black SUV parked in spot 116. 

The car peels out as soon as they shut the doors behind them. 

“All good?” Sitwell asks.

Maria shrugs. 

Sitwell leans closer. “Hey,” he says, putting an unwelcome hand on her knee, “this is the job. Sometimes you have to burn the world down to build something better in its place, understand?”

Of course she understands. She’s been hearing that her whole life. It doesn’t make the blood run any less red. 

“Petrov.”

“I _understand,”_ she snaps, and doesn’t speak for the rest of the car ride.

* * *

MUNICH 

  
  


“Mission parameters?”

“Get inside, don’t be seen,” Kurtz relays. “The Prime Minister should be asleep in his bed; don’t worry about him, the Asset will take him out. You need to take care of his wife and children.”

Maria nods slowly. “How many?”

“Two girls and a boy. The wife is fifty. Usually passes out on the couch after a couple of glasses of wine.”

Maria absorbs that. She finishes loading her gun and glances at the Asset—Soldat, she reminds herself. _That’s his name. It’s the name he gave me… when? When did I know him before this?_

“Viper,” Kurtz urges, “Repeat the parameters.”

“Kill the wife and children. Don’t be seen.”

“That’s right. Now you might run into some interference—our scouts think they spotted a couple of SHIELD’s boys in an apartment complex across the way, but they’re not sure. Just be quick and quiet and you shouldn’t have to worry about a thing. Cover the Asset and he’ll cover you. Understood?”

“Understood.”

The car stops. They get out and keep running: up to the building, through the side entrance, take the stairs; apartment suite 456B; pick the lock—

( _Natalia,_ she thinks, so suddenly she stops in her tracks. _Natalia used to pick the lock on my door with her hairpin—_ )

Soldat gives her a little push. “Go left,” he whispers, in Russian. Something about that isn’t right. 

Maria heads left. The apartment is dark, but she can see that it’s expensive. The walls are white and covered in ornamental scaffolding; there is polished mahogany furniture scattered throughout, and fresh floral arrangements give the place a sickly sweet smell. 

She creeps along a hallway. Toes open a pair of glass French doors with her boot. 

On the couch in the living room, the wife is passed out just like Kurtz had said she would be. The TV is still on and playing some old black and white comedy program. Maria raises her gun to the sound of a laugh track, and then—

She’s yanked back and shoved into a wall. The gun is knocked out of her hands. Maria lashes out without thinking; unsheathes her knife and twists her body to avoid a punch, aims a roundhouse kick for her attackers left side. Lands it. 

But he’s good. He keeps fighting, keeps blocking and ducking. He’s taking a defensive stance, forcing her to tire herself out with the offense. Maria gets sick of that and tackles him, locking her thighs around his neck before bending her whole body back so her momentum brings them both down. 

Something hits her thigh. No—doesn’t _hit,_ something is _impaled._

“Son of a bitch,” she hisses, releasing her hold with the pain and shock of it. Maria yanks the knife out and grins because what kind of _idiot_ arms their opponent?!

He seems to realise his mistake at the same time and works at trying to disarm her. Maria rolls and dodges but her moves are getting slower. She’s losing blood and strength. 

There’s not a lot of room to move around in the hallway. They take it to the dining room. He throws her across the table. Glass shatters, scrapes her arms and legs and sides. Maria doesn’t stop. She grabs a turned over vase and hurls it at him. 

“Oh— _fuck!”_

“Hurts, doesn’t it?”

“The knife would’ve been more effective.”

Maria shrugs. “I’m saving it for later.”

The SHIELD agent isn’t amused, especially when she launches herself at him again and brings him down with a flurry of kicks and precision-point punches. The one to the throat is what really gets him. He chokes and falls. 

Maria straddles him and makes to slit his throat, nice and easy, but he’s still got strength left. He grabs her arm and pushes against her, and she pushes back, and then it’s down to a battle of wills. 

He rolls them. Maria gets the blade against his neck and he jerks back, wincing when she draws a little bit of blood. He’s still trying to push her arm away. 

Maria’s been so focused on the upper half of her body, she’s forgotten her legs; she knees him in the groin and he grunts, rolling off. 

“ _Ow.”_

Maria is about to bring the knife down, about to stab him right in the gut like a fucking fish, when she sees her: 

A little girl standing in the hallway, eyes wide, terrified. 

She has red hair. 

“Oh, fuck,” Maria breathes. “I can’t fucking do this.”

She was made to kill men, not little girls. Maria twists the knife and, without really thinking about it, stabs herself instead. 

“What the _fuck?!”_ The SHIELD agent demands, scrambling away in shock. “What the fuck. _What._ Why did you do that?!”

“Just _get them out,”_ Maria hisses. 

Then the world goes black. 

* * *

“You failed the mission.”

Maria blinks groggily. The room she’s in is brightly lit and sterile. Her abdomen has been wrapped in gauze and her head aches like crazy. 

“What…?”

“You _failed,_ ” Pierce snaps, coming closer. “Sixteen ops so far and _now_ you go soft?! Do you have _any_ idea what a catastrophe you’ve created?! I bought you because you’re supposed to be the _best_ and _this_ is the shit you pull! What in the hell were you thinking?!”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about…”

Pierce slaps her. Maria is knocked awake with the force behind it. Her face grows hot. “What the _fuck?”_

Pierce snaps his fingers. “Do you know where you are?”

She tries to think. Where’s the last place she really remembers being? A… a house? One with an attic and a big long dining table… where had that been? 

“I don’t…”

“ _America,”_ Pierce snaps. “You are on _American soil._ I am your goddamn _commander_ and when I give you an order you _follow through._ Is that understood?”

“But I don’t remember what I didn’t do. Why can’t I remember?”

Pierce rolls his eyes. “Did they fucking wipe you already? Are you shitting me? So I’ve just been wasting my goddamn time—guards! I’m done here. Put her back under, would you?”

  
  


* * *

60 MILES 

FROM

TORONTO 

This time it’s a little run down cabin in the middle of the woods. The ground is covered in snow. She’s alone and though it occurs to her that she shouldn’t be, that someone should be with her, she can’t remember who. 

She keeps walking, blindingly following the orders they’d given her. 

There is a man. A traitor. He’s going to be in the cabin. Viper’s going to kill him. 

Only it doesn’t go that way. She has a feeling this isn’t the first time one of her missions has been rudely interrupted by the enemy: 

And yes, when she meets his eyes across the dead space of the hallway, she recognises him. 

“Holy shit,” he breathes. “You’re alive?!”

She tilts her head. “Do I know you?”

“Uh, Munich? Last year? You tried to kill me but ended up stabbing yourself with a knife, does that ring any bells?”

_Munich. Last year._

Her stomach drops. A bitter taste fills her mouth. “What… what year is it?”

She’s afraid of the answer. 

The enemy agent steps forward—cautious, slow-like, with his hands raised. “Easy. I’m not gonna hurt you. Jesus, what the hell do they do to you over there, huh?”

“What do you mean?”

“Nothing, just—you can put the gun down, okay? I’m serious. If anything I wanna help you.”

“I don’t _need_ help,” she snaps, anger bolstering her stance. The agent stiffens and stops advancing. “I’m here to do a job. You’re in the way.”

“Yeah,” he nods, shrugs his shoulders. “What are you gonna do about it?” 

“I’m going to shoot you in the head and then kill my target.”

“And what if I told you that he’s already been extracted and he’s halfway to Alberta?”

It’s instant, out of her control: a high-pitched ringing, a wave of magmatic anger in her belly and he’s sent flying back into the wall. “He was my _mission!_ ” She screams. 

“Ow, what the—did you do that with your _mind?!_ ”

“Shut _up!”_

He’s dragged up by an invisible force and pinned to the wall, and she starts to choke him, she can _feel_ his windpipe crushing under her will, can feel his lungs straining and beginning to shrivel, and the black is so deep, the darkness is in her veins. Viper’s going to kill him. He can’t move. He can’t speak. He’s going to die in a soundless, motionless, pathetic kind of way.

( _Don’t let them control you.)_

Her hold releases. She stares with wide eyes, her chest heaving, something warm trickling from her nose. 

And then she falls. 

She must black out because the next thing she knows he’s right there, two fingers cold against her pulse point, a wrinkle between his furrowed brows. 

She pushes him off. “Don’t touch me!”

“I’m—” he coughs, and his voice is barely there at all anyway, “I’m sorry, God.”

“I _failed again,”_ Viper snaps, standing, and the fear is so real that the little glass trinkets on the shelves in the kitchen begin to rattle, and the floorboards rise and fall, and she can’t breathe. “I failed because of _you.”_

He shakes his head in wonderment. “You can’t control it, can you?”

“Leave me alone,” she demands. “Stop fucking everything up for me!”

“Why don’t you just kill me? Seems like the easiest solution that I can see.”

She shakes her head. “You’re not my mission.”

“But I’m in the way. Don’t you have instructions to kill anyone who interferes?”

“I wasn’t told to.”

He nods to himself. “Because the location is so remote. He was in hiding. They didn’t think you’d run into anyone so they never told you to get rid of witnesses. Holy _shit,_ is it really that specific? It’s like you’ve been _coded_ or something—”

“What do you mean?!”

“What’s your name?” he asks, abruptly. 

“I… Viper.”

“ _No,_ your real name.”

Viper doesn’t understand. She can’t remember ever being anything before this. “What do you mean?” 

“Oh my god.” The agent shakes his head in wonderment. “That’s absolutely insane. Are all of you like that? Do they, what, organise the rest of you by numbers? Or do you all get cute little nicknames like the Winter Soldier?”

“Who?”

“No _way._ You’re fucking with me. You _have_ to be fucking with me.”

“Why are you asking me these stupid questions?!”

“I guess I wanna know if there’s anything to salvage,” the agent replies. “I mean _come on,_ you’re just a kid. There’s no way you actually _want_ to be doing any of this, right?”

Viper shakes her head to clear it. Everything is getting fuzzy and ill-defined. She doesn’t understand, can’t comprehend the meaning of his words. _Want?_ Since when is _wanting_ anything an option? 

“Enough of this,” she decides, and abruptly opens her hand. Her discarded gun slaps against her palm. 

She shoots him. 

* * *

The next thing she knows, it’s cold. 

Everything. The air. Her skin, her blood, her bones. She’s freezing, shivering, lying flat against a metal table. It brings a strange sense of deja vu; she can’t place the memory of _why._

“Subject,” a voice says, prompting her to turn her head so fast her neck strains. A man in a suit is leaning against the wall. He’s holding a set of yellow folders and he studies her carefully for a moment, before stepping closer. “You’re malfunctioning.”

“I—” her teeth are chattering, “I’m s-sorry…”

“No, no,” he shakes his head, “it’s our fault. Your programming is based off of another device in our custody. It never occurred to us to change the way we wired you based off of your nature. But that’s all fixed now. So tell me: what’s your name?”

“I… I don’t…”

“Good. Wonderful.” He starts to circle the table. “You’re called Viper, for the record. Do you know where you are?”

She thinks, hard. “No.”

“That’s okay. We recovered you wandering around a supermarket in Toronto last. Do you remember that?”

Anger, for some reason, lashes like a whip deep in her belly. “No,” she says, through gritted teeth. 

He squints at her. “Siberia,” he replies eventually. “But you’ll be shipped to New York tomorrow for your final test. If you happen to fail me again… just know that this is your last chance. 

“What—?”

Something is pressed over her mouth and nose. She breathes in a sweet smelling gas and slips into the dark.

* * *

NEW YORK

  
  


“Good morning, Viper. It’s nine thirty-two PM and you’re in New York City. Are you ready for your mission?”

Viper raises her head and blinks blearily at the man above her a few times. He’s dressed in black camouflage and armed to boot. An American, a HYDRA agent. 

“Ready.”

The soldier tosses a file onto the metal table where she sits. She doesn’t know how she got here. There is a vague, quickly fading memory of waking, of being marched at gunpoint down a long narrow hallway. Maybe that’s real. It’s hard to tell these days. 

Viper opens the file and stares at the picture inside. 

“This man is named Richard Parker. HYDRA demands that you kill him.”

* * *

They give her everything she needs to do the job: weapons, ammunition, a set of Kevlar, and his address. They also rent her an apartment across the street from his own, already equipped with surveillance gear, and tell her to take as long as she needs. 

That first night after Richard Parker goes to sleep, Viper stares at the wall, sitting cross-legged on the mattress they had provided her with to sleep on. It has no sheets, no blanket, no pillow. It does not occur to her to even want these things. 

There’s something about the man they’re making her watch. She’s only seen his distant shape; average height and build, messy black hair. Something about him is familiar. It’s almost like… like she knows him?

But how could she? She has no memories of him. 

Still something tingles in the back of her mind. She occupies herself by taking her gun apart and putting it back together again, trying to do it faster and faster each time. She doesn’t sleep at all, haunted by the feeling that she’s already gotten enough of it to last a lifetime. 

She paces the floorboards, plays with her knives, sharpens their edges and flips them over in her grip. She never misses. 

( _Who taught me this again? Was it the man in the suit? No, that’s not right… who, then?)_

At three in the morning, Richard Parker gets up for a smoke. 

Viper watches him from her window. He stands on the fire escape in a faded _HARVARD_ sweatshirt, shivering. The end of his cigarette glows orange every time he brings it to his lips. For some reason, she’s disappointed when he crawls back inside his place. 

It’s the boredom, she tells herself. 

But then a light flicks on and she can see his silhouette from behind a gauzy white curtain: he sits at a desk, typing away at a computer and sipping from a cup of coffee. He’s there until dawn, and at exactly 5:45 in the morning he leaves his apartment for a run. 

Viper had watched him get ready and now she tails him, dressed in the civilian gear HYDRA had given her. She keeps a safe distance but he never looks over his shoulder, only stops to tie his shoe once and then again for a drink of water. 

On his way back he gets coffee and a bagel and then shuts himself up in his apartment again. 

It goes on like this for a whole week,until he finally breaks his routine that Saturday: no morning run this time, just the coffee and the bagel. He walks to his destination—which turns out to be a little run down building under a stack of apartments, full of games with flashing lights and colourful 8-bit graphics. 

An arcade. 

Richard Parker is standing at one such machine. The objective of the game seems to be avoiding the rainbow ghosts and finding one’s way out of a maze as a wheel of yellow cheese. She watches him for a while, flummoxed at this strange turn of events, barely paying attention to the game she had commandeered to spy on him. 

The feeling of deja vu has only grown stronger over the last week and now, it’s like a siren in her brain. She _knows_ him, but how? When have they met before? 

What… what came before _this?_

Viper doesn’t want to think about that. She knows in her bones that it’s bad. 

“Street Fighter? Really?”

Viper jumps, rounding on him—Richard Parker, who had taken advantage of her confusion and slip in attention to slide up to her. He leans against the nearest game with a smirk. “Howdy.”

“Do I know you?” she asks, in a perfect imitation of a Queens accent. 

He pushes off the machine, suddenly serious and intent. “That’s… scarily good.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Right, okay,” Richard nods. “So I’m just supposed to believe that the girl who’s been following me since Sunday just _happens_ to look just like the girl who shot me in Canada. Is that right?”

“Shot you?”

His brows draw together. He studies her closely. “Jesus, you really don’t remember, do you? What did they do, wipe you or something?”

Viper shakes her head. “We’re not supposed to be talking. Now I have to kill you.”

“Even at the risk of killing all these little kids?”

Viper can’t help glancing around. The arcade is indeed full of children. Richard clicks his tongue. “I knew that would get you. Same thing happened in Munich.”

“Munich?” Viper asks. “I don’t understand.”

“I don’t either,” Richard says. “You’re clearly not built for this. Well, I mean, you are—you kick serious ass, but it’s like you’ve got this Achilles heel they keep forgetting to account for.”

“And what’s that?”

“Compassion. Maternal instinct, maybe? I don’t know. You almost killed yourself to save that kid and I swear to god, I can’t stop thinking about it. You looked so scared. One minute you were about to slit my throat and the next… I see that shit every night, you know? Every single dream ends with you bleeding out in that hallway and me dragging the kid off to safety and the Winter Soldier shooting her mother in the head. _Every night.”_

And as he says it, it comes back to her: a dark apartment, a TV programme, a little girl in a frilly pink nightgown with wide green eyes. The terror she’d felt in that moment knowing what she had been about to do—what they had been about to _make her do—_ and her split second decision to turn the knife on herself. 

Viper swallows. “We met before.”

Richard nods. “Yeah, we did. And Toronto—you remember that? You tried to kill me?”

“No I didn’t.”

“What?”

“I missed,” she whispers, realising it now. “On purpose. I just wanted to shut you up and get out.”

To her surprise, he grins. “I get that a lot.”

Viper shakes her head. Anger and fear turn her stomach into a cocktail of heat and she lashes out, grabbing him by the sleeve of his jacket and dragging him straight out the back door. She pushes him against one of the walls that forms the alley around them. 

“Who the _fuck_ are you?”

He isn’t phased. “Pretty sure you know exactly who.”

“How do you know so much about me when I don’t even…?”

They still. 

“You don’t know who you are,” he surmises after a beat. 

She pushes him harder. “It doesn’t make any sense. I can remember Munich and Toronto because you _told me,_ but everything else is… _gone._ But I _know_ there should be things. I _know_ that I was someone. It’s like… they stole it.”

“And who is they?” he asks, sharper now.

Viper starts to shake. “HYDRA.”

“And how does that make you feel?”

“I know what you’re doing,” she snaps. “You’re just trying to make me angry. It _won’t work._ Cut off one head and—”

Richard finally pushes back. He gets her against the opposite wall. “I don’t need to make you angry because you already are. One look at you and I know. I think you’ve been angry for a long time, Maria Petrov, and frankly I think it’s about time you showed those sons of bitches who’s boss. _Fuck_ their heads. Cut them all off and burn the necks like Hercules did.”

She blinks. “What did you just say?”

He frowns. “About what?”

“ _Maria,_ ” she says, strangled. “You called me Maria.”

Richard’s grip loosens. It’s a fatal mistake. She twists his wrist and knees him in the side, and then uses her leg to flip him onto his back. He lands in the gravel and grunts. By that time she’s already pulled her gun. 

“Don’t fucking follow me,” she snaps. 

She gets halfway down the alley before rounding. “And it’s Heracles by the way.”

Richard blinks. “Noted.” 

* * *

The cell is hidden near the shadiest most run down area of the Hudson docks. Maria remembers being loaded into the van at night and catching a glimpse of the run down warehouse across the way from the end of the tracks. There are five train cars parked there and it’s for them that she’s come again. 

Because she remembers. Not all of it, no. But she remembers Soldat, and Pierce, and Richard. 

She’d been halfway out the apartment door after packing up her gear when someone else had come back, too. Maria’s hand had slammed against the wall for purchase and the name had fallen out of her mouth, strained and small:

“ _Natalia.”_

Now, Maria marches straight up to the burnt orange trailer marked 0916. She shoots the lock off and yanks open the door. Inside, five HYDRA agents look away from their computers and see her just in time to die.

By this time, the gunfire has alerted the other agents to her presence. They come running, armed and infuriated, but taken by surprise nonetheless. 

And what had they expected? Dumb fucking idiots hadn’t written her mission parameters correctly. 

She shoots two agents approaching from the right in quick succession. They drop like flies. The ones on her left nearly get the drop, but she handles them quickly; snaps one neck, then two, and rolls for cover when gunshots follow. 

She picks them off slow after that: ducking out from behind the broken down car she’d chosen as shelter to kill the sniper that’s perched on the rooftop of the warehouse. When he’s taken care of she’s free to keep after them on foot. 

It’s a bloodbath. At one point she’s fighting an agent hand-to-hand in one of the train cars. His head makes a nice round dent in the metal and he doesn’t move or breathe again after that. 

At another, she’s knee deep in murky waters, getting her side sliced into with a knife. “That’s fair,” she says, and then submerged him in the Hudson until he stills. 

The warehouse: jumping from rail to rail, throwing someone over the side, finding the entrance to the underground facility and combing through what’s left of that force, too. 

Ten. Fifteen. Twenty. 

Finally it’s just her. 

She emerges back into the night. It’s eerily quiet. The water laps gently against the shore. Her magazine is empty and her side is bleeding. 

But for once—for _once—_ she’s free.

* * *

When she shows up at his apartment window twenty minutes later, Richard swears before he opens it. “What the hell, Petrov?”

She’s light-headed from blood loss and desperate. The anxiety is beginning to set in, the paranoia. Her voice shakes when she speaks next. 

“I need your help.”

* * *

Half an hour later and she’s perched on the counter in his bathroom, bent awkwardly so she can stitch up the wound in her side. He’d offered to help, but she’s not ready for that; for having someone else’s hands on her, for being that close to someone else’s heat. 

She faces away from the mirror, does her best not to look, but in the end when she’s tossing out bits of gauze and thread, she catches a glimpse of herself.

Haggard. Rabid, like an animal that needs to be put down. Bloodshot eyes and blown pupils. Her hair falls straight down instead of curling—and she _knows_ it’s supposed to curl, knows that at one point it had been the absolute bane of her existence trying to manage. 

Her skin is so pale she can see her veins: dark blue rivers of blood running up and down her arms, under her eyes, her neck. 

Richard knocks on the door. Maria jumps and, heart hammering in her chest, rips it open. 

“What?”

“Hello to you too,” Richard says. “I made food if you, y’know, eat.”

“I eat.”

“Well okay then.”

He steps aside to let her pass. Maria walks through the disorganised maze that is his apartment. There are books stacked everywhere; on tables, against the walls, in boxes—textbooks on astronomy, physics, genetic research, anatomy, psychology. There are also a few dying plants sitting on windowsills and just like he said, there’s a pot of pasta waiting on the kitchen stove. 

“What does it taste like?”

Richard frowns. “You’ve never had it before? Wait, don’t answer that, of course you haven’t. Sorry, sometimes I forget you’ve spent like, your entire life isolated from the rest of the world. Anyway, that’s spaghetti—”

“I know what it is, idiot,” she says. “Part of the Black Widow Programme was learning about every culture well enough to fool someone you’d been a part of it all your life. This is an Italian staple but Americans have commercialised it like they have so many other foods: pizza, gelato, tacos.”

Richard blinks. “Jesus.”

Maria rolls her eyes. “It’s just what we were taught.”

“Well,” he claps his hands together, “this is my brother’s girlfriend’s recipe, so it’s as Italian as Italian gets.”

“You have a brother?”

He procures two bowls from the cupboard above the sink. “Yeah, his name’s Ben. What about you? Any siblings?”

Maria swallows the lump in her throat. “Not really, no.”

He freezes. “Sorry, that was a really dumb question. You wouldn’t even know if you did, would you? I mean, I’ve heard things about the programme. For all you know you were fighting a blood relative every week and they lied to you and said she was a stranger. That’s… I can’t even imagine that with Ben. Don’t think I could find my way out of a paper bag without the kid.”

“He’s younger than you?”

“By eighteen months, yeah, but he’s way bigger than I am so you’d never guess it.”

Maria decides to perch at this counter too. For some reason it makes him smile. She swings her legs back and forth while he dolls out the portions until it occurs to her: 

“What do you mean you’ve heard things about the programme?”

He stills. “Just, y’know, what I've gathered from you, and…”

“ _And?”_

Richard sighs. “There’s this girl my friend was chasing after for a while. Everything in SHIELD is kept on the down low so for all I know he found her and recruited her—”

“Or killed her,” Maria counters. 

“Yeah. Or that. Anyway, I’m pretty sure she was part of it too.”

Maria slips off the counter abruptly. “What did she look like?”

Richard stiffens. “I don’t know. He never said.”

Maria grits her teeth and looks away, eyes burning. “Doesn’t matter,” she says. “He probably killed her anyway. That’s what you do to animals, right?”

She doesn’t realise that the teacups on the wall are rattling or that the lights are flickering until Richard’s hand is on her cheek, not quite rough and not quite soft, but a nice balance of the two. Not hot. Not cold. Just warm and real and gently turning her head back to meet his eyes. “Hey—”

“Thank you for the food,” Maria says, taking the bowl. “I’m going to eat on the fire escape.”

* * *

There’s something transfixing about all of the lights: little and golden like a thousand tiny stars streamlining across bridges, making windows glitter. Electric and alive, the city is a heart beating to the pulse of the people. It makes her feel more real than she ever has, and there is a richness to the smallness she suddenly feels too. 

She’s just one person. One little ant in a sea of millions. They can’t find her like this. 

After a while the pasta gets cold. She doesn’t eat it anyway. She simply sits with her head resting against the iron bars of the railing, staring through the gaps of it. 

Then the window opens. Richard is there, of course, staring at her with those big brown eyes. 

“You mind if I smoke?”

“Be my guest,” she says listlessly.

He lights up, rests his elbows on the windowsill, and watches the city with her. For a while it’s silent, and then, “I’m sorry if what I said upset you.”

“Why would I be upset?”

He considers her. “It must have been hard growing up in a place like that.”

She shrugs. “I didn’t know anything else.”

“Yeah, but even then. You would’ve wanted someone to hold on to. You would’ve tried to make a family, or at least friends, right?”

“Why would I do that? All we did was compete against each other.”

“ _Dude._ I’m trying to sympathise with you here. Now I may not be a Soviet trained assassin slash espionage artist, but I am a super secret agent slash spy. I can tell when someone is lying.” He taps away his ash. “You had a family, didn’t you?”

Maria feels sick. She snatches the cigarette. “Doesn’t matter what I had. I left them.”

“Not all of them wanted to be there in the first place. This girl my friend was after… she saved his life. Well, she didn’t kill him like she was supposed to. Figure that counts for something, right?”

“I didn’t kill you,” Maria says, “but that doesn’t change the fact that I’ve killed _dozens_ of others. Maybe hundreds, I don’t fucking know. Hard to keep track when they fry your brain after every mission and stick you in a freezer.” She shakes her head. “I have _no idea_ how many atrocities I’ve committed. They’re coming back to me, though. Bits and pieces of what I’ve done. I see myself but it’s like… it’s not me. Not the me I always knew, anyway. Just someone they created. They took my body and put someone else inside my head, and they made my hands into weapons. It’s like my whole life has been one bad fucking nightmare but I only realised I was asleep a week ago, you know?”

A shaky drag. Tears in her eyes. 

Richard reaches out, and it doesn’t hurt when he brushes her hair behind her ear. She’s so surprised she forgets to flinch, forgets to breathe. 

“The bad things you’ve done aren’t who you are. _Especially_ when you never even had the chance to do any good. You never even got to be a real person, and yeah, that fucking _sucks ass,_ but I swear to god you will, and I can’t wait to meet her. I can already tell she’s _good,_ and kind. Bit of a badass too, if you ask me.”

Maria laughs a little. She chews on that for a minute. 

“Why did you tell me your brother’s name?”

He frowns. “What do you mean?”

“Names are special. You should only tell them to the people that you trust.”

“Yeah, well,” Richard shrugs. “Call me crazy, but I trust you.”

“Okay.” Maria takes the cigarette and sucks another drag. “You’re crazy, Richard Parker. But I like you anyway.” 

“I like you too, Mary.”

Her nose wrinkles. “Mary?”

“What, you don’t like it?”

“No, I just… no one’s ever given me a nickname before.” She bites her lip. “Anyone ever call you Rich?”

He grins. “My brother.”

“Well, now I do, too.”

* * *

“I have an idea.”

Richard makes this proclamation over breakfast the next morning. His hair is rumpled and flat on one side because he’d slept on the couch and given her his bed.

Maria hadn’t slept. She’d spent the night staring at the door waiting for it to open; waiting, she thinks, for a little girl with red hair to slip in and rush the bed. 

“What’s your idea?”

He jerks open his fridge, pulls out a can of soda, opens it and dumps its contents into the sink. Maria watches all of this with well-hidden fascination, idly stirring the marshmallows in the cereal he’d made her. 

“Okay,” Richard sits back down across from her, “crush the can.”

“What?”

“With your mind,” he elaborates.

“I’m still not following.”

“Look, I’m not about to say I know what you’ve been through, but it doesn’t take a genius to figure out you don’t exactly have the best control of your… superpowers. _So,_ you should practise. Maybe it’ll make you feel better.”

Maria squints at him. “I don’t see what crushing a can is going to do for my self-esteem.” He grins. “What?”

“Nothing, it’s just… sometimes your accent slips and you sound a little bit Russian again. Whatever. Anyway: can.”

Maria rolls her eyes and leans back in the chair. She glares at the stupid can, expecting to be able to crush it with ease. After all, she’s done a lot more than this before. To her surprise, it’s harder than it looks. Maybe it’s because she’s not afraid or angry. 

After a few minutes of concentration, however, she grows frustrated. A coffee mug on the counter shatters.

Richard jumps. “Jesus! That was—I mean, it was awesome, but so not the idea.”

Maria wipes the blood from her nose. “Didn’t think so.”

He grabs a paper towel and hands it to her. “That happen every time?”

She shrugs. “As far as I know, which is admittedly very little.”

“Okay, okay. Try again?”

“I’m not a dog, Rich.”

He stills. “Sorry. God, I’m… I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay.”

“No, it isn’t. I seriously didn’t even think—”

“ _Richard.”_ He meets her eyes, hand halfway through his hair. “If I say it’s fine, it’s fine.”

He lets out a long breath. “Yes, ma’am.”

* * *

“How the hell do you know the difference between Hercules and Heracles but you forget your own name? Just curious.” 

Maria grins. “It’s the important things that stick,” she says, and he laughs. 

They’re wandering through the bread aisle in a grocery store not far from his apartment. Maria hadn’t wanted to leave, but he’d convinced her with the argument that he was gonna go either way, and if she went with him, at least he’d have protection. 

Now she grabs his sleeve, suddenly alert. “Don’t make it obvious,” she whispers, “seven o’ clock: two HYDRA agents.”

“What are they doing?” he whispers back, pretending to inspect a loaf of rye. 

“Watching.” She squeezes his wrist. “Richard, if they’re here that means they’re back at the apartment, too.”

“How could they—?”

“Don’t be stupid. They know where you live. They’ve probably been watching us for _days.”_

“So what are you saying?”

“I’m _saying,_ we need to ditch these two and find somewhere safe to hide.”

Richard bites his lip, thinking. “That file you said they had on me… did it mention anything about May Reilly?”

“Who?”

“Thank God. Okay, follow me.”

* * *

They manage to lose the agents in the subway. They get on one eastbound train and wait for it to get crowded before slipping off. The agents try to follow but can’t get out in time. Richard leads her across the platform and they hop onto the westbound train instead.

She’s still holding his sleeve.

Slowly, she lets go. “Smart,” she says. 

“Thought about pulling it on you.”

“So why didn’t you?”

He shrugs, and it might be her imagination, but she thinks he might be blushing. “Maybe I didn’t mind the attention so much.”

Maria doesn’t know what to say to that, so she doesn’t say anything at all for a good three stops. Then, “Do you have any savings?”

“Some, why?”

“We can’t go back, Richard.” She meets his eyes, trying to tell him how sorry she is with them. “They’ll be there. The only way to really get free is to start fresh somewhere else—”

“Mary, I can’t just leave all of my things there. I have _years_ of research stashed away in that apartment, not to mention, like, family photo albums—”

“Okay,” she cuts in, “so tell me exactly where everything is and I’ll sneak in and get it for you.”

“ _Mary.”_

“ _Richard,”_ she counters, “it’s the least I can do.”

“What do you even mean?! What have _I_ done for you? Made you spaghetti?!”

She finds that it’s suddenly hard to look at him. “You don’t understand. It’s been… a really, really long time since anybody’s treated me like I’m a human being. Maybe the first time ever, I don’t know. I’ve never met anybody like you before. I’ve never been able to just… trust.”

“I almost killed you,” he argues. “I could be lying to you, I could sell you out down the line—”

“No.” She shakes her head. “That’s not you. Besides, someone who’s planning on selling me out wouldn’t warn me against it, _and_ you would’ve done it already.”

“Mary—”

“Let me do this.”

“God, fine. Okay. I’ll draw you a map when we get to May’s.”

Maria nods. “Who’s May, anyway? Your girlfriend?”

He glances at her sharply. “What? No. She’s Ben’s girl.” Richard grins suddenly. “Why, would that bother you?”

“We’re not having this conversation.”

“Why not?”

“Because we’re enemies.”

“Enemies? You ditched HYDRA.”

“Yeah, but… we just can’t. I shot you.”

“I threw you across a table.”

“I choked you.”

“Using the _Force,”_ he adds, “so if anything, it was one of the best experiences of my life.”

Maria frowns. “What?”

“Nothing. This is our stop.”

* * *

“Richard!”

May Reilly greets them barefoot in a sundress. Her hair is long and braided down her back, but strands fall loose around her face in an accidentally perfect sort of way. She smells like citrus oil and her apartment is no bigger than a shoebox. 

Maria loves her instantly. 

Regardless she keeps her guard up as the other woman throws her arms around Richard. It’s weird; for so long Maria’s only been worrying about herself, only been watching her own back, and now she’s watching Richard’s, too. 

“Hey, May,” Richard greets with ease. “Ben around?”

Her nose wrinkles as she draws back. “No, he’s in training again. And who is this?”

“Oh, this is—uh, my girlfriend, Mary Peters.”

_Clever,_ Maria thinks, plastering on an easy, fake smile. 

And May—who is clearly so ordinary, who had thrown the door wide open and probably doesn’t even know how to use a gun—sees right through it. There’s a look in her eyes, like she’s searching, like she’s… concerned. 

They shake hands. “It’s nice to meet you. I didn’t know you were dating anyone, Richard.”

“Oh, yeah, well, it’s only been like two months—”

“I asked him not to tell anyone,” Maria says swiftly, following May inside and scanning the place for any and every possible entry and exit point (front door, window above the sink—too small to get in and out of, but could serve as a vantage point for a sniper or an opening for a grenade or tear gas; the bay window by the couch; hallway—three doors, one open to reveal the bathroom sink and mirror; in the reflection she catches a glimpse of another window, again too small for someone to get through but still a vulnerability). “I’ve heard a lot about you, though. You’re Italian, right?”

Richard is looking at her like she’s an alien. May just nods, returning to what she’d been doing before: making dinner. It smells kind of burnt. 

“I was born there but we moved here when I was, oh, nine or so.”

“ _Parli ancora la lingua?”_

May looks up sharply. Then she grins. “ _Sì,_ ” she says. “Are you…?”

“No, but I studied it in high school. Beautiful language. So how long have you known Richard?”

A shrug. “As long as I’ve known Ben, so about two years I guess. I don’t really keep track of that sort of thing. Don’t you think it’s obnoxious when girls get so obsessed with anniversaries and stuff? I can’t even remember how Ben and I met. Feels like it happened lifetimes ago.” She tilts her head. “But _you two_ just got together. How’d you meet?” 

This one doesn’t have to be a lie. “The arcade.”

May laughs. “So you’re just as into that geeky stuff as he is?”

“No, but I was there to meet a few friends and I ended up forgetting my bag when we left. Rich saved it for me. Still kinda gives me a heart attack thinking about how I could’ve lost all of my money and credit cards, you know?”

“Oh, tell me about it. You know this one time I left my purse on the subway…”

And that’s how she meets May.

* * *

“You’re really good at that,” Richard says later, when it’s just the two of them sitting across from one another on May’s beat up loveseat. “Lying, I mean.”

Maria picks a piece of lint off the blanket she’d been given. “I grew up learning how. After a certain point it becomes second nature.”

“Hey, no judgement here. I just… didn’t expect it.”

“Well I didn’t expect _this,”_ Maria counters. “All of my life I’ve been following orders and now I… I’m following you, I guess. And it’s not… bad. It’s just different. It’s like… I’ve seen cities, you know? Been in them. Ridden public transport. But I never really registered any of it, you know? And now there’s sound and there’s options and _possibility._ I’ve never felt like this before. I don’t even know how to describe it.”

He looks at her sadly for a long moment. “Alive?”

Maria stares back. Then, abruptly, she leans forward and takes his hand. Richard starts a little but doesn’t withdraw. He lets her turn it over so she can inspect the scar on his palm. “I’ve been meaning to ask: what’s this from?”

“Oh. I uh… I was in chem class one day and this flask I was using got too hot. Shattered everywhere and I cut my hand pretty deep. It was actually kind of funny because there was all this blood, and my teacher was freaking the fuck out, but I got so lightheaded so quick I just started laughing. Then I passed out. _But_ then I got a week off of school and an automatic A in the class.” 

Maria smiles a little, tracing the white-tinted line. 

Then, to both of their surprise, she raises his hand to her lips and kisses the scar. It’s an old wound that her touch can’t heal, but she still feels like trying. 

Richard stares at her, mouth parted in shock. For a split second everything is quiet; the sound of honking cars and barking dogs and shouting people just fades into nothing. Then he kisses her and it’s like an ocean roaring in her ears, stirring around in her stomach. Maria is perfectly willing to succumb to it, to drown in it, but then Richard rips away. 

“I—sorry. I’m sorry.”

“Why are you sorry?”

He shakes his head. “It’s not right,” he whispers. “I can’t. I’d feel like I was taking advantage or something.”

“Taking advantage how? I’m perfectly capable of making my own decisions.”

“Are you?”

Her protest dies in her throat and she rakes a hand through her hair. It’s been washed since she’s started staying with him and the curls are slowly returning. “I was a person before this, you know. Before _them._ They might have fried my brain a few times, Rich, but it’s all still there underneath. I can _feel it,_ I just can’t remember it. Like—I know that wasn’t my first kiss, you know? But I can’t… I don’t know who the first one was with. There’s just this impression of a memory.”

He glares at his lap. “I hate that they did all of that to you.”

“It’s not just me,” Maria reminds him. “There are others. When we met in Toronto you mentioned the Winter Soldier and I couldn’t remember who he was then but I do now, and Richard, he’s like me. He was a person before they fucked him all up in the head.”

“The Winter Soldier is completely different—”

“No, listen to me: he’s _good,_ okay? He practically raised me—”

“Wait, _what—?”_

“I know they made him do awful things, but it’s not _him._ I’ve seen who he really is underneath, okay? I remember that. I remember the man who tried to protect me in the Red Room.”

Richard looks sick. “God, he was in the Red Room with you. That makes so much sense. The reports say he dropped off the map for a while and I figured he was just in hiding, but no. He was there with you, he was teaching you. _Fuck.”_

Richard rises off the couch, aggravated. Maria stares with wide eyes. “You’re after him,” she realises.

“No. Well, sort of. It’s not an official assignment.”

She reaches out and grabs his wrist. “You have to stop looking,” she whispers. “You can’t—you’ll never be able to find him. Not if he doesn’t want to be found.”

“So how is it any different with you?”

“I’m his daughter,” she says, and then backtracks as his eyes widen. “Not _really._ Not by blood. But I never had… he was a father to me. He took care of me. In the Red Room and when I was with HYDRA.”

And it’s true: all of these bits and pieces are coming back. She remembers her missions with him, she remembers training with him as a child and she remembers training with him two months ago, in that glass cage in Siberia. They’d taken him away so many times. He would be gone for months and it would unsettle her. She would pace the floor in her cell, knowing something was wrong but not knowing _what_ until he came back covered in blood with fury in his eyes. 

Sometimes he would start to wake up. He would beat his handlers or lash out at Pierce. He’d start speaking in that Brooklyn accent and he’d call her Becca and tug on her braid. He would be gentle and kind when it was just them. He was patient when he taught her how to kill. 

Richard kneels by her. “Mary… this is so fucked up. I don’t even know what to say.”

She squeezes his hand. “Say that you’ll help me.”

“Even if I wanted to, how the hell could I?” 

“SHIELD has a file with more information—” she starts to say, but stops when the front door opens. 

“Ben!” Richard blurts, standing up. “Hey, man.”

Ben Parker slowly closes the door. He looks exactly like Richard, but taller and bulkier and sporting a beard. “Rich, hey,” he says, in a confused sort of way, “what are you doing here so late? Where’s May?”

“She went to bed already,” Richard replies. “Said she didn’t mind if we stayed over. My apartment’s being fumigated.”

Ben nods, still clearly flummoxed. Maria doesn’t blame him; Richard is a terrible fucking liar. The younger Parker brother finally notices her (he’d make a terrible spy). “Who’s this?”

“Mary,” she greets brightly, holding out her hand for him to shake. “I’m your idiot brother’s girlfriend.”

Ben doesn’t shake her hand. “Are you now?”

Maria raises an eyebrow. “Problem, officer?”

He looks down at his uniform as if just remembering that he’s wearing it. “Oh, I’m uh, just an officer in training.”

“So I’ve heard.”

Ben’s attention switches back to Richard abruptly. “Since when are you dating anyone?”

“Since two months ago,” Maria replies for him. 

“I was asking my brother.”

“Fine,” Maria shrugs. “How long have we been dating, Richard?”

“Two months,” he says, now just as confused as his brother had been. “Hey, Ben, mind if I talk to you in the kitchen real quick? Alone?”

“Fine by me.”

Maria rolls her eyes as they slip off. She can hear the faint sounds of bickering and for the first thirty seconds it’s amusing. Then it’s kind of rude. Feeling restless, she stands and starts to pace the space, flexing her hands. They’re in want of a weapon. 

Maria bites her nail and stares at the door.

Richard won’t just help her. He has to _trust_ her. In order for him to do that, she needs to earn it. 

* * *

Maria gets in through the fire escape. The apartment’s already been trashed when she gets there; the books have been knocked off the shelves, his bed’s been overturned, the television is broken. She creeps through slowly, gun drawn, glass cracking underfoot. 

She’s halfway through the hall when a shot rings out. Maria ducks; the mirror above her head shatters and the shards rain down into her hair. “ _Fuck,”_ she hisses, running for cover.

Maria eventually gets tired of waiting and pokes her head out from around the corner she’d hidden behind.

Two more shots in her general direction. Something else breaks. She draws back. Decides to duck into the bathroom. There’s a little hatch window above the toilet that leads to a small terrace. She shimmies out and scales the wall, busts in the living room window, tucks and rolls, and comes up on one knee just in time to shoot the HYDRA agent before he can shoot her. 

Maria stands. The agent isn’t anyone she recognises. Just another expendable head stationed to keep watch in case anyone came back. _Wasn’t very good at his job,_ she thinks wryly. 

There isn’t much time. Richard had told her where he’d stashed a few things, but her search doesn’t bear much fruit. HYDRA is smarter than they look. 

But she does find the tin army medical supplies box stashed under the bedroom floorboard; the flash drive is still inside, just like he’d said it would be. And she finds the money he’d told her about behind the wall panelling in the bathroom. It’s not much, but it’ll be enough. 

She’s counting it when the sound of a creaking door makes her ears perk. 

Maria stands. Instead of leaning out into the hall she watches the approaching figure from the mirror. 

She could crawl out the window again, but something tells her that whoever is out there right now knows exactly what she pulled before and they’ll be ready for it. 

“Come out, come out, wherever you are,” the voice says—male, probably early twenties judging from his reflection, about the same build as Richard. “Come on, I know you’re there. You made a real big mess of the place.”

Maria grits her teeth and checks the chamber in her gun, and her stomach drops when she realises it’s empty. “Fuck,” she hisses. 

A floorboard creaks. 

He’s right there in the hall. 

“Screw it,” she spits, and steps out to meet him half way with her empty gun raised. 

The agent looks almost confused, and then recognition lights his features. “You’re the Viper.”

“And you’re Clint Barton,” she realises. He’d been all over Richard’s file. “Hi.” 

“Pleasure to make your acquaintance,” Barton returns. “Now where the hell is Richard?”

“Not here.”

“What did you do to him?”

“I didn’t do jack shit,” Maria snaps. “Believe it or not, I’m helping the poor bastard.”

“Oh yeah? Explain that to me in a way that actually makes sense—oh wait, you can’t.”

“You’re even more of an asshole in person, you know that?”

“Just answer the question, Petrov!”

“I will if you answer one of mine.”

Barton snorts. “The charm is wearing off real quick.” 

Maria swallows her nerves. “Richard told me that a woman had been assigned to kill you and she didn’t follow through. What did she look like?”

Barton is really confused now. “ _What?_ Why the hell would he—”

“Just _tell me!”_

“Fuck no!”

The front door bursts open. Barton rounds on it, and she uses his distraction to take him down; she drops her gun, aims a roundhouse kick for his bow, catches it in her other hand and smacks him upside the head with it. He careens to the left. She sweeps his legs out from under him. Puts a foot on his chest. 

“Mary!” Richard says, running over. “What the hell?!”

“He was being rude,” Maria snaps, and then tells Barton, “By the way, using a long-range weapon in close quarters is really stupid.”

“What are you doing here?” Richard demands. “I was freaking the fuck out—”

“I got the money and the flash drive but everything else was gone,” Maria says. “They had one sleeper planted but more will be on the way when he doesn’t check in—”

“I’m sorry, you two are _working together?!”_ Barton demands from on the floor.

“—we need to _leave,_ Rich.”

Richard looks from her to Barton. “Let him up.”

Maria does. Barton shoots up like a box spring and snatches his bow back. “That was unladylike. And since when are you two in cahoots?”

“Cahoots? Seriously?”

“Forgive him, he was born an old man.” Richard ducks into the bathroom to grab her findings. 

Barton squints at her. “Why’d you pull my bow on me instead of shooting me?”

“I was out of bullets.”

The archer grins. “Oh, I _like_ you. Richard, I like her! But I’m really confused, I thought you were evil.”

Maria rolls her eyes. “Just brainwashed.”

Barton nods slowly. “Brainwashed or a really good liar?”

“Did you really just come right out and ask if I’m lying to you? Like I would just, what, _tell_ you or something?”

“Enough, both of you,” Richard snaps as he comes back into view. Barton’s mouth snaps back shut. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”

* * *

Barton hails a cab. Then he hauls the driver out, tells them to get the fuck in the car, and peels out onto the street while the cabbie bitches from the sidewalk.

“What the fuck, man?” Richard demands, breathless in the passenger seat. He’s clutching the backpack Maria’s had since this morning to his chest, the one with his money and research stashed inside. 

“We’ve gotta get you guys to a safe house,” Barton says. 

“A safe house?!” Maria feels sick at the thought. “Monitored by _who?”_

“SHIELD, duh.”

Maria scowls. “There’s no way SHIELD is gonna let me just sit pretty in some secured apartment after what I’ve done.”

“You’re absolutely right, they won’t,” Barton glances at her in the rear view mirror, “but if you really are what you say you are, it doesn’t matter how much they interrogate you or piss you off. You still won’t be going back to HYDRA, right?”

Before Maria can answer, Richard says, “No one is putting a hand on her.”

“Richard—”

“I said what I said. I’m vouching for her. Is that understood?”

Barton’s jaw clenches. “Whatever you say, kid.”

“Good. And don’t call me ‘kid’, I’m four months older than you.”

* * *

The safe house is located in the middle of Brooklyn. It’s one of those nice, expensive brownstones, the kind Maria always dreamed about living in when she read about New York. 

The inside is barely furnished, just beds and some basic necessities in the fridge. Barton stares at her for a long moment while Richard is puking in the bathroom—probably something to do with what a terrible driver his partner is. 

“Why did you ask about the woman?”

“What?”

“The one who didn’t kill me. What does she have to do with anything?”

Maria bites her tongue. “Before I was the Viper, I… nevermind, it doesn’t matter. She’s probably dead anyway and I’m done chasing ghosts.”

Barton nods slowly. “Well, if you say so. Listen, I’m gonna leave you both here, but I’ll be back at dawn with some others. Don’t freak out if we just show up, and _don’t_ go anywhere. You need anything, call the number on the fridge.”

As he turns to leave, she calls, “Rich’ll need cigarettes.”

Barton stops. He reaches into his back pocket and fishes out a pack. “He can have the rest of those. Now I’m serious: stay fucking put, or we’re gonna have serious problems, you and me.”

“Wouldn’t want that, what with you being so big and scary and all.”

The corner of his mouth twitches. “Jesus. You’re gonna be a handful, huh?”

“Lucky you’ve got two hands.”

He full-on smiles. “You’ll be good for the team. If that’s what you decide to do, I mean. Or you could just… take the fake identity we’ll make for you and live out your days in some remote location, always looking over your shoulder, never able to settle down—”

“I get it.”

_Fight or flight._

He does a little bow. “I will return upon the sunrise, m’lady.”

* * *

“Your partner is an idiot.”

Richard is sitting on the edge of the bathtub. She’s perched on the counter. The window is cracked and they’re both smoking because there’s fuck-all else to do.

“He’s not really my partner,” Richard says after a minute. “We’ve been paired up a couple of times lately but… he’s more of just a friend.”

“Right,” Maria nods. “I get it.”

Richard stares at her. “Why did you do it? Just take off like that?”

“I just… wanted you to trust me, I guess.” 

“Well that was fuckin’ stupid because I already do.”

“You shouldn’t,” Maria says. “I mean… God, I don’t know. They had a hold on me, Richard. They made me forget who I was and now I can’t stop thinking they’ll be able to do it again. I don’t even know _how_ they did it. I don’t know how long I was the Viper for or what they made me do or where I went. I don’t even know how _old_ I am. I just have little bits and pieces and most of them don’t even connect.”

He chews on that. “What do you remember the most?”

“My childhood.” She shrugs. “The Winter Soldier is probably the clearest. He was the person I held onto in both lives.”

And that’s how it feels: like two lives, two separate people. The only link she can find in both is Soldat. 

“What did Ben say?” she asks abruptly. 

Richard heaves a sigh. “Nothing. I didn’t have a chance to explain. I’ll have to call him and make something up, I guess.”

“Why was he acting like that? Do you think he saw through me, or…?”

“No, no, it’s not that. I just, uh, got out of a really long, bad relationship. Ben can be pretty protective. He didn’t like the idea that I’d jumped into something else so soon. But we’re—I mean, we’re not really… so it’s…”

Maria hops off the counter. “Budge up,” she says, and sits beside him. “Listen: we don’t have to be a thing, you and me. I’m very good at self-restraint, so it doesn’t matter how much I like you, I don’t have to act on it. Or you can tell me to fuck off and I’ll go rough it in the great white north, I don’t care. I’ve never been able to really live before, so I guess life in any capacity sounds okay to me.”

“That’s really kind of you to say.”

“Thank you.”

“It’s also a big fat lie.”

Maria huffs. “And what would you know about lying, Richard Parker, when you’re so god-awful at it?”

He laughs. 

Maria decides she likes the sound.

* * *

They don’t sleep. Richard paces and Maria chainsmokes and finally, a little bit past five, they come. 

“Well, if it isn’t my least favourite agent and his new pet.”

“Fury,” Richard greets. “I wasn’t expecting you.”

“No, and I wasn’t expecting _this,_ ” Fury counters, gesturing at Maria, “but it can’t always be that easy, can it? Now what the hell am I supposed to do here, exactly? Because _Barton_ had the stupid idea to recruit you.”

“Oh, am I allowed to speak now?” Maria asks.

Fury tilts his head and considers her. “You’re a feisty one. I don’t like feisty.”

“And I don’t like arrogant assholes, but here we are.”

Fury actually smiles. He steps deeper into the kitchen. There are two armed men hind him, and then there’s Barton looming in the shadows.

“Tell me about yourself, Maria.”

“Why don’t you start by telling me what _you_ know?”

He sighs as he sits down at the kitchen peninsula, lacing his fingers together. “I know very little. Most of my intelligence comes from what we’ve gathered about your, shall we say, alter ego, Viper. I know she’s ruthless. I know she has a kill count up in the triple digits. I know she spends _way_ too much time around the Winter Soldier for my comfort. But here she is now, right in front of me, docile as a wet cat and—you are willing to cooperate, aren’t you?”

Maria feels sick. “Yes. How long have you been watching me?”

“Oh, since Munich. That was about two years ago now.”

“But what about before then? How far back does it go?”

“Three years, maybe?”

She nods to herself. “So I’m eighteen, then.”

Richard’s eyes widen. “You’re only _eighteen?!”_

“Worried you’ve done something nefarious?” Barton asks wryly.

Richard hurtles an apple at him. Barton laughs and dodges. 

Maria hardly pays them any attention. She’s caught inside her own head, deep in the dark. Fury grabs her attention by snapping his fingers in her face. She blinks, startled, and finds that his expression has changed. He looks almost sympathetic. 

“You’re not the first person I’ve seen come from something like this. Mark my words, you won’t be the last. I can help you. But in return, I need _you_ to help me.”

“I won’t go back,” she says, and it feels like they’re the only people in the room. “I can’t. I won’t spy on HYDRA for you or use Viper to gather counterintelligence—”

“I understand. I would never ask that of you.”

“Then what?”

“It’s pretty simple, kid. I just want you on my team.”

Maria swallows. “That’s it? Just like that? What if I betray you?”

“Then I kill you,” Fury says simply. “But something tells me it won’t ever come to that.”

_Don’t let them control you—_

— _unless the only alternative is to lose control._

She bites the inside of her cheek. “Okay. I’ll work for you.”

“Fantastic!” Fury grins. “Welcome to the good guys. Now, I think this calls for a celebration. Is there booze in this place?”

“It’s a safe house, sir,” Barton reminds him.

“With no booze? What the hell is anyone supposed to do in here?!”

* * *

Acclimating to her new life is strangely easy. 

The days pass quickly because she barely has time to breathe, much less think. Every morning a different agent comes to escort her to SHIELD’s underground base; she spends hours training in their gymnasium and running their sims. Fury watches. Sometimes he makes a comment or two. Other times he just nods and leaves after she finishes. 

It turns out that the thing Richard spends the most time doing for SHIELD is actually genetic research, not espionage. She’d laughed when she’d found out and he’d spent a good hour or so trying to explain to her how it was _just as important_ as what she was training to do.

Not that there’s much for her to learn. She can take out most of the operatives she’s paired up with easily. 

At night, Richard takes her home. Sometimes they go shopping on the way. Slowly, piece by piece, they’re making the safe house a home. He’s teaching her to cook and she’s learning how to bake. One time he takes her to his favourite _patisserie_ for inspiration, but it’s a waste; she has a panic attack five minutes in because all she can think about is Nat. 

Domesticity. Fighting for the good guys. It’s more freedom than she’s ever had before. 

Her dreams are a different story: Soldat will come to her at night, half rotted save his arm and spitting angry words in Russian. Yelena will be next, a hauntingly beautiful wraith, demanding to know why Maria left her behind. 

And last, always, is Nat. 

She’s always small. Maria sees her running through the halls in the manor, or pirouetting in the studio. She sees her laughing in the gardens and sucking her sugar-coated thumb. None of it is bad or warped; they’re all just memories, and somehow that’s so much worse.

She wakes up most nights in a cold sweat. It takes her a few minutes to remember where she is, _who_ she is. Sometimes she can get to the bathroom before she switches from Viper—on edge, ready to snap the neck of anyone who crosses her path—to Maria again. 

And very slowly, over time, Maria is becoming Mary.

It’s mostly Richard’s fault. He doesn’t call her anything else; it’s “Mary, pass the salt please?” and “We can’t get a cat, Mary, I’m allergic,” and “Everything’s okay, Mary.”

The last is uttered softly on the rooftop of the safe house. Maria wanders up there in nothing but one of his t-shirts after waking up in a cold sweat. She stumbles out of her tangled up sheets and climbs the stairwell and there he is, head tilted and smoking a cigarette. 

“Hey, stranger.”

“Hey.” 

She sits down next to him and plucks the cigarette from his grip like she’s become accustomed to doing, and he turns to stare at her like he’s always done, and they’re very close. She can smell him: smoke, laundry detergent, just a hint of mint toothpaste. 

“You didn’t sleep.”

He shrugs. “Didn’t seem like the night for it.”

Maria smiles, but it fades fast. “You’re tired, I can tell.”

“I’m fine,” he says, and it’s with such conviction, such assurety. He talks that way a lot; belief is fact just so long as it’s his mouth forming the words. “Everything’s okay, Mary.”

“Bullshit.”

His mouth quirks up. “I don’t wanna worry you, Mar. You’ve got enough on your plate as it is.”

And maybe it’s the selflessness that does it, or the gentle way he speaks, or the nickname for the nickname; either way she’s leaning in to kiss him for the first time in weeks, and it’s like drinking water after days in a desert. She gets so caught up in it she doesn’t even remember climbing into his lap, and then his hand is on her thigh and it’s warm and real, _he’s_ real, and he cares about her. No one’s ever cared about her before—not the way he does, anyway; wholly, passionately, like an instinct, like second nature. 

Richard rips away. “Mary—”

“ _Richard,_ ” she counters, and his name is like a sob on her lips. _Is_ a sob. When had she started crying?

She thinks maybe, just maybe, for the first time the tears are happy ones. 

He reaches up to brush them away, and then he’s just cupping her face, mouth parted in shock, lips flushed. He shakes his head. “I can’t. Jesus, I’m five years older than you.”

“I’m an _adult,_ you stupid _debil.”_

He laughs against her neck. “I want to,” he whispers. “But it’s not right.”

“Why? I want it too. I want _you,_ Rich.”

“ _Mary…”_

She kisses him again. It’s all she can think to do. Words won’t convince him, so maybe this will?

Again, he pulls back. It’s infuriating. Mary deflated against him and settles for wrapping her arms around his neck. 

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay. And hey, if you won’t sleep with me, can we revisit the whole cat thing?”

He throws back his head and laughs. 

Like it’s a joke or something.

She’ll get her damn cat. 

* * *

One of her training sessions ends early when she accidentally drop kicks the guy and breaks his leg. It’s tragic, but he’s a taunting douche bag anyway, so she’s not too worried about it. 

She could go see Richard with the unexpected gap in her schedule, but instead she wanders the halls of SHIELD’s facility until she (innocently, definitely _not_ intentionally) comes across Fury’s office. 

The walls are glass so she can see that it’s empty, but it’s heavily secured. 

Biting her lip, she looks _up_ instead and grins when she sees a vent.

“Thanks for the tip, Barton.”

* * *

It was a stupid idea, reading her own file. 

Mary gathers that one page in. By page five, she’s sobbing her ass off, huddled in a supply closet staring at photos of herself; photos of the scenes she left; pictures of the people she killed. There are so, so many. 

She closes it. Takes a minute to just breathe. Then she wipes her cheeks and grabs the second manila folder that she’d snatched. This one is much thicker and just holding it makes her feel like vomiting. 

Opening it is so much worse. 

They don’t have good pictures of him. In every single one, he’s wearing his mask and goggles. But she knows what he looks like underneath, and it’s right then that she remembers: that video, the one they made all of the girls watch in the manor. 

“What did they do to you?” She asks of the blurry, grainy surveillance photo stapled to one of Richard’s reports. 

There’s no answer. 

Then: “Mary?” 

Her head snaps up. Panicking, she shuts the file and hastily gathers all of the paperwork up, hugging it to her chest as she stands. 

Richard emerges from around a corner. “Hey, Saul said he saw you come in here. What are you…? Oh.”

Mary shrugs. “I just wanted to… I thought closure would be nice.”

“Did you get any?”

She shakes her head. “Not much. Mostly just more questions. I should probably put these back, huh?”

“I mean, if you don’t want Fury to drop you from the training program, yeah.”

She nods and quickly ducks around him, before stopping mid-step. “If I wanted to read about Steve Rogers, where would I go?”

“Steve Rogers? Like ‘Captain America’ Steve Rogers?”

She nods eagerly. “Yes. Yeah. Him.” 

“Uh… there are tons of books, so the library I guess? And I know there are a few museum exhibits. What does Steve Rogers have to do with anything?”

“Nothing,” she says. “I was just… curious. Thanks!”

* * *

It’s as she’s putting the files back that she sees it. 

* * *

Mary gets in a taxi that night. She makes a pit stop at the library and spends roughly an hour there combing through books on Captain America—but the first one she’d read was enough, the one with the black and white picture of two men laughing. 

She rents it. The librarian is a nice old lady named Doris who doesn’t notice Mary’s shaking hands. 

“You have a good night, dear.”

“Thank you, ma’am.”

Then she walks to that little bakery Richard had taken her to before taking yet another cab to Little Odessa. 

And how cute is that? A little inside joke just for her. She pays the driver a little extra when they get there and tells him not to wait around, before slipping inside the building right as someone is coming out. 

She takes the stairs just to think it through one last time, to weigh all of the potentially negative outcomes over in her mind, and even though there are so many her feet still carry her forward anyway. 

Apartment 3B. 

Mary stands in the hallway for a moment, shifting her footing. She whacks the little paper bag of baked goods against her thigh while she works up the courage to knock. 

When she does, a dog starts yapping excitedly behind the door. 

It opens a couple of inches but it’s still chained. For a moment there’s no one: just a muffled voice hissing, “Back _, Popchyk,”_ and then—

Red hair in wild, long curls. Big blue-green eyes. Frosting on her cheek. Flour in her hair. 

Fear. 

Her sister tries to close the door but Mary’s already stuck her foot in the gap. 

She smiles. 

“Hey, Natasha.” 

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> :D
> 
> just a note: if you’re confused about how long Mary was w/ hydra, it was around 2 years. We only saw three of her missions but she went on a lot more. she’s a rlly unreliable narrator but things will become clearer in time. 
> 
> anyway I hope that didn’t suck!!! pls lmk what u thought!!!


	3. Chapter 3

  
“What the hell are you doing here?”

The words drop out of Nat’s mouth ragged and heavy. Mary lifts her bag of sweets in response. 

“I brought lemon cakes.”

Tearful grey-blue eyes flit to the bag and back again. Another beat of stunned silence passes, and then her sister’s dog barks eagerly from the floor. Nat jumps, then reaches through the crack in the door to yank Mary through. “Get inside,” she hisses, deadbolting and locking it again before whirling around.

There’s a gun in her hand. That’s good; she’s still paranoid. Still safe. 

“Maria,” she says, like she’s testing the name on her tongue. “How did you know where to find me? How are you even _here_ right now?”

Mary walks deeper inside the apartment while she endures Nat’s line of questioning. It’s quaint, if a little on the small side, but the furniture is nice. “Cute place. Madame B would approve of the lack of dust on the valences.”

“You’re making jokes?!” Nat demands. “You think this is funny?! I don’t know if it occurred to you, but you can’t just waltz in here and act like no time has passed—”

“I didn’t waltz in, you pulled me inside.” Mary pauses. “ _Ow_ , by the way.”

Nat lets out a hysterical laugh. She covers her mouth. Sucks in a sharp breath. “You _left_ me,” she whispers, horrified and hurt. “You were supposed to be my family and you left me.”

“So did Yelena.”

“How did you know that?”

“You just told me. Besides, she’s not _with_ you,” Mary points out. “So she’s still with them, right?” 

“I—she was angry. She spent that entire last year trying to push me away and they pulled her out early because she was being too aggressive with the other girls. I don’t know if she’s even still alive—I didn’t even know _you_ were alive—”

“Well I am. Are you gonna do something about that or are you gonna put the gun down so we can talk like grown-ups?”

Nat’s shaking. A tear finally streaks down her cheek. She glances at the gun, re-affirms her grip on it, and asks, “Did you track me down just to ask about Yelena?”

Maybe it’s the broken way that she asks it, all that fear underscoring her words. Maybe it’s just time. But suddenly Mary doesn’t care about the weapon or the circumstances; she starts forward and pulls Nat into her arms. “No. _God_ , no. I promise.” 

The gun clatters out of Nat’s grip. She starts to cry. “Maria,” she gasps, wrapping her arms tight around Mary’s body, “You _left me._ ”

“I know. I know, and I’m so sorry. You have no idea how sorry I am. I swear to god I would’ve taken you with me if I could. I thought about it so much, about what I could’ve done differently, but there was just no time and…” she pulls back to wipe Nat’s face dry. “I could give you excuse after excuse, but we both know it’s bullshit. I was a coward and that’s all there is to it.”

Nat grips her wrists. “It’s okay.”

“No, it’s not—”

“Yes it is. I don’t care anymore. I’ve decided and now it’s final. I just want you back.”

Mary laughs a little. “I missed you so much, you know that?” 

Nat’s grip tightens. “Where… where have you _been?_ ”

“I’ll explain it all,” Mary promises, “but preferably over drinks. Do you have anything?”

“Bottle of Smirnoff,” she says. “Are those really lemon cakes in there?”

Mary hands over the bag wordlessly and makes for the kitchen, rifling through cupboards until she finds the vodka and some glasses. The place isn’t well stocked; there’s exactly four of everything: plates, utensils, bowls. Figures Natalia would be the type to duck into a Bed, Bath & Beyond, grab the first dinnerware set she saw, and leave. 

“How are you living on your own, anyway?” Mary asks as she pours them both a healthy portion. “Last I checked you were still a minor.”

Nat shrugs. “I lied about my age. Besides, I like being on my own better.”

Mary looks at the tiny white ball of fluff on the ground. Popchyk wags his tail expectantly. “Do you now?”

“He’s temporary.”

“Mm-hmm.”

Nat throws the shot back. “Shut up.”

Mary grins and sits across from her at the little kitchenette. They both eat a cake each in silence, until, “How long have you been with SHIELD?”

Mary shrugs. “About six months now, but not in any official capacity. I’m just training. Figure Fury’s still feeling me out. How’d you guess?”

“My file is the only place my address is documented,” Nat sucks her thumb, “and Barton might’ve mentioned something that got me thinking.”

“Yeah? He mentioned something to me, too, but I… I didn’t press. Too afraid to get my hopes up.”

“Too afraid to get your hopes up, or too afraid to face me again?”

Mary raises an eyebrow. “Both. How about you?”

“Yeah,” Nat nods. “Both.”

Mary pours them both another drink because they’re getting too sad far too quickly. She watches Nat for a minute as her sister carefully breaks up her sweet, even tossing a few crumbs on the ground for the dog to taste. 

“How’d you get out?”

Nat shrugs. “Barton helped me. I’m in the same boat as you: probation until Fury’s sure I’m not gonna turn tail.”

“Will you? Turn tail?”

Nat squints. “Why would I do that?”

“I don’t know, I just… never realised you saw that place for what it was. I mean, you never fought back, you never—”

“I killed a kid,” Nat says roughly. “After that, I couldn’t… it messed me up. Got me thinking.”

Mary swallows the acrid taste in the back of her mouth. She takes the vodka by the mouth of the bottle. “Sometimes that’s what it takes.”

“I just… they trained us all our lives to fight each other. To kill. But when I thought about killing it was always men that I saw: men that they promised were our enemies, that they promised deserved it. Children are innocent. I couldn’t do it anymore.”

“I get it,” Mary says. “Really, I do.”

Nat snatches the bottle. “Can we talk about something else?”

“Sure. _Why_ are you with SHIELD?”

A shrug. “Wanted to see how the good guys did things.”

“So Barton…?”

“Has a fiancé,” she says, “and even if he doesn’t know it, I’m a little young for him. Besides, I’ve got red on my ledger. I’d like to wash it out.”

“Did you try bleach?”

A snort. “Funny. What about you?”

“I don’t know. My ledger’s pretty drenched. Don’t know how I could ever get it clean again.”

“But you’re trying?”

“I’m… working my way up to trying. But I need your help with something.”

Nat slowly lowers the bottle. “So you did come here with an agenda.”

Mary reaches out and grabs her hand because she can’t have her thinking that. “No. This is different. This is family.”

Nat frowns suspiciously. “What do you mean?”

Mary turns and unzips her backpack to fish out the book she’d rented from the library only hours ago. She sets it down on the table and takes a deep breath before opening it to the page she’d marked, turning it so Nat can see. “Look familiar?”

Nat’s eyes widen and her hand flies to her mouth. She starts to speak but Mary talks over her because this is important. “His James Buchanan Barnes. He was a sergeant in the 107th Infantry Regiment. He was twenty-three years old when he died. The book says that he fell from a train in the Alps—”

“Wait a minute—”

“—but it also mentions that he’d been kidnapped before then and taken to a prison in Azzano. I think that’s where they gave him some kind of super serum—like a modified version of the one they gave Captain America—”

“Maria,” Nat cuts across, “this is dangerous, okay? _He’s_ dangerous. The things he’s done—I’ve read all about them and they’re even worse than the crap we used to make up about him when we were kids!”

“I know that.”

“And you still wanna go chasing after some ghost?!”

“He’s not a ghost! He was our friend! He was my… He took care of us, Nat.”

Nat scrubs a hand down her face. “I know how much he meant to you, but he’s not what we thought. He’s done… terrible things. Assassinated presidents, set schools on fire.”

“I know that,” Mary breathes. “I know exactly who he is.”

She meets Nat’s eyes and tries to say with them what she can’t with her mouth. And Natalia, who is her sister, who knows her better than anyone on this planet, shoots out of her chair. “That was—the reports we were getting, that he was working with some kind of an accomplice—that was _you?_ You’re the Viper?”

“I _was_ ,” Mary whispers. “Not anymore.”

“ _Maria_ —”

“See, that’s what I’m trying to tell you,” she says, rising to go over to her, “if I was still me under all of that, if I could still go back to who I was no matter how many times they fried my brain—”

Nat starts to cry again just a little like she can’t even help it, but Mary keeps talking; “If I was still me, who’s to say he’s still not James? Who’s to say the man in that picture isn’t still inside of him, buried under all that programming? He’s _trapped_ , Nat, and he needs someone to help him get out again. Now, I don’t remember the specifics of where they used to keep us, but I know there was a place somewhere in Siberia, and there are cells all across the States—”

“This is insane—”

“How is it insane?! Wouldn’t you do it for me?”

Nat covers her face with her hands. “That’s not the same thing. I can’t believe you’re even suggesting this. It’s—he’s practically a myth, Maria. If he doesn’t wanna be found he won’t be.”

“What if he does, though?” Mary asks. “What if deep down he does want to be found? What if we could help him?”

“That’s not how this works. He murdered JFK!”

“Didn’t realise you were such an American.”

“Oh, shut up. You know what I mean.”

“Do I? Because that was before we knew him and he was still kind to us!”

“Kindness doesn’t excuse—”

“It wasn’t his choice!” Mary bursts, feeling hot all over. “He didn’t have a say! They _broke him,_ don’t you get that? They broke him like a fucking _dog!_ I remember the things he used to—he would wake up sometimes and he’d fight back, he’d—he’d start crying because he was scared—”

“Are we still talking about him, or are we talking about you?”

Mary stops short. Suddenly it’s like there’s no air in her lungs. She has to sit down. “You don’t believe me.”

“It’s not that I don’t believe you, it’s just… dangerous.”

“Our entire lives have been dangerous. We grew up sitting ten feet from the man at the breakfast table, Natalia! He _never_ hurt us.”

That’s a lie, at least on Mary’s part, but Nat is at least inching toward being convinced. She sits back down across from Mary and eyes the photograph. “He wasn’t much older than we are.”

“He still isn’t,” she whispers. “Well, tack on a few years for the time he spent with us in the Red Room, but other than that he was mostly frozen on and off.”

“Frozen?”

“Cryogenesis.”

Nat swallows. “And they used that on you, too?”

“Yes. They used everything on both of us. One time they put a cigarette out on my skin just to see if it would heal.”

“And—and did it?”

“In time. But it took longer than James’ wound. His serum is a lot more powerful than ours is, which I get the feeling is sort of a watered down version. It’s why they administered it first in the graduation ceremony, so we would heal faster.”

Nat’s face loses color. “Did they, um… did they do it to you, too?”

Mary’s heart breaks in half like a rock under a chisel. “No. No, I got away before they could.”

Her sister absently touches her abdomen, right around where the scar probably is. “Oh. That’s… that’s good.”

“I’m so sorry, Nat.”

“You don’t have to be. Wasn’t your fault.” She dries her eyes and stands, taking their glasses to the kitchen. “So what’s your plan, anyway? You said Siberia, but you don’t have specifics?”

“No. But I know other places here where they might be keeping him that we can check.”

Nat turns around at the sink. “You’re sure you wanna go down this road? Because you know if we do, there’s a big chance we won’t even reach the end of it.”

“So it’s ‘we’?”

“Shut up. It’s always ‘we’.”

* * *

Mary waits in the living room while Nat packs a bag. They leave under the cover of darkness and walk to the nearest Rent-A-Car. The last vehicle in the lot is a battered green Camry, but it’ll do. 

They stop at a gas station and fuel up. Nat runs in to grab snacks while Mary leans against the hood examining a map. 

“Salt and vinegar okay?”

Mary doesn’t start like Nat had hoped she would, sneaking around the car like that. “Kettle cooked?”

“Only way I like ’em.”

Mary grins. “I knew there was a reason we’re sisters.”

Nat leans over, resting her chin on Mary’s shoulder like she always used to during class. “So where are you taking me, Petrov?”

“Washington D.C.,” Mary replies promptly. “I think there’s a base there.”

“You think?”

“I’m ninety percent sure.”

Nat hums. “Good enough for me. But you’re driving.”

“Obviously,” Mary replies. “I actually _want_ to arrive alive.”

“ _Suka_.”

* * *

They drive through the night and arrive in Washington at around five in the morning. Mary pulls into a little rest stop parking lot and turns the car off. She glances over at Natalia, asleep in the passenger seat with her head pressed against the glass. 

The other girl hadn’t spoken much on the way here other than to remark on directions. Now she’s relaxed in sleep and actually looks her age for once. She’s tired. They both are.

Mary reaches over and gently jostles Nat’s shoulder. She doesn’t expect Nat to lash out at her touch, but she rolls with it and pins her down. “Hey, _hey!_ It’s me. It’s Maria. You’re okay.”

Nat, breathing heavily, blinks and slowly uncoils. “Sorry.”

“It’s okay.” Mary lets go. “You wanna talk about it?”

“No,” Nat says. She jerks her chin toward the diner. “Food?”

* * *

They order pancakes with whipped cream and strawberries to share. Nat eats the fruit and Mary spoons up the cream. “Main SHIELD headquarters aren’t far from here,” Nat points out idly. “Wouldn’t be surprised if Fury’s got scouts on the lookout for us.”

Mary shrugs. “We grew up learning how to avoid people like that. Shouldn’t be too hard to shake them off. But this is between us, okay? It’s a family matter, not SHIELD business.”

“But if we get him we’ll bring him in, right?”

Mary falls silent. 

Nat kicks her shin under the table. “ _Maria_.”

“I haven’t decided yet.”

“You really didn’t think this through, did you?” Nat asks. “God, are you really expecting you can just fix him all on your own?”

“I almost did before.”

Nat shakes her head. “That wasn’t the same. You had _years_ and the circumstances were _completely_ different. Besides, he’s only gotten worse since then. The best thing to do would be to hand him over to Fury and explain everything. I bet you anything he’d never be suspicious of us again.”

“He’s _Fury_.”

“It’s the _Winter Soldier,_ ” Nat counters. “He’s like the pièce de résistance for bounty hunters. You bring him in, you earn Fury’s trust for life.”

“ _Or_ he gets even more suspicious because he thinks we’ve brought James in just for that reason.”

Nat flops back in her seat. “So what are you saying? You wanna keep him locked in some hole in a basement until he finally remembers who he is? Lower him food in a bucket?”

“This isn’t _Silence of the Lambs,_ ” Mary says. “And it won’t come to that.”

“Maria—”

“We can _reason_ with him,” Mary tells her, but she’s almost pleading and they both know it. “He’ll recognise us and then we can help him. Just… trust me, okay?”

Nat throws her hands up. “Whatever. I’m gonna go pee.”

* * *

Washington turns out to be a bust. The outpost Mary only vaguely remembers has been completely cleared out. She gets the feeling there’s probably another cell close by, but not one large enough to contain the Winter Soldier. They’d need the whole she-bang for that: armed guards, a state of the art security system, an armoured place to store him. 

As they’re creeping through the darkened halls of the former hospital turned base, Nat asks, “So they kept you here, huh?”

“Yeah.”

“You remember for how long?”

“Nope.”

“Do you remember anything?”

“Bits and pieces,” Mary says, carefully turning a corner with her Glock drawn. “I try not to think about it too much.”

And that’s the truth, after all; she’s gotten so good at compartmentalising her time with HYDRA, actually, that sometimes the things she _does_ remember seem like dreams that belong to another person. She can look at it objectively, indifferently. 

The worst part is that specifics escape her. Everything’s gotten all jumbled together with time. Names and faces are blurred—things she could recall clearly months ago are fading, and other things she can _almost_ place but can’t quite reach the mark. James is clear for some reason. She remembers sneaking through the vents and into his cell once to sleep on the grimy floor, close but not enough to overwhelm him. 

Sometime in the night he’d rolled down to join her there. 

Nat sighs. “This whole building is empty. There’s _nothing_. No files, no servers, no evidence that they were even here at all. Are you sure this is the right place?”

“Yes,” she says, because even if it’s been completely cleared out and wiped down to the point of being sterile, she remembers the twist and turns of the hallways by heart. “I think I spent a lot of time here, actually. It’s like… muscle memory.”

She stops because Nat is staring at her. “What?”

“Nothing, I just…” a shrug of her shoulder. “I hate that you had to go through all of that. I mean, our childhood was bad enough, you know? I don’t know how you’re even still standing. Think I would’ve given up a long time ago.”

“That’s not true.”

Her sister snorts. Mary grabs her arm before she can walk away. “ _Hey_. It’s not true. You’re the strongest person I know.”

Nat’s lip quirks up. “Funny, I was gonna say the same thing about you.”

Mary feels her entire body flood with warmth. It’s like Nat is the sun and she’s melting the layers and layers of permafrost that have grown around her bones, along her organs and inside her veins. She can’t remember the last time she felt this human: raw and red-blooded and dangerous—a danger borne from strength in numbers, from knowing that her best weapon is the girl at her side and no matter what, they’ll fight for each other, die for each other. It’s a loyalty that doesn’t break with time. It’s ingrained in their DNA. 

Mary presses a kiss to Nat’s forehead. “Come on, let’s go.”

“Where to next?”

“Texas.”

* * *

They drive for a good six hours before they decide to call it a day. Mary pulls off the road and into the parking lot of a run-down motel with a lit vacancy sign. She turns the car off. “Can you get our rooms sorted? I have to make a phone call.”

“Who says I don’t have a phone call to make?”

“ _Nat_.”

Her sister smirks. “Alright, whatever. Just don’t pick up any diseases from the pay phone.”

Mary snorts. She watches her sister climb out of the car and run up to the front door of the building, and it’s only when she’s inside that Mary approaches the little glass box with the phone inside. There’s graffiti on the walls and cigarette butts littering the ground and a lingering smell of piss, but she doesn’t let it deter her. 

Mary fishes some change out of her pockets and deposits a quarter. She waits while it rings, letting her forehead rest against the cool, frost-coated glass window. After twenty seconds of dialing someone finally picks up the phone. 

“Richard Parker speaking.”

“Hey, Rich.”

All at once his aloof tone changes into something urgent, something desperate and fearful. “Mary, where the hell are you?! Are you okay? Are you safe?”

Her lip twitches. “I’m fine. I’m… I’m with someone I trust.”

There’s a pause. “Is that all I’m gonna get?”

“For now,” she says, watching Nat argue with the desk clerk through the window. “You don’t need to worry about me, okay? I’ll be home soon. I think, anyway.”

Richard sighs. She can practically see him pinching the bridge of his nose. “Fury is convinced you’ve gone completely rogue. He says you and some other high-risk trainee are both off the map—”

“Richard?”

“What?”

“I’m coming back. Everything is gonna be fine.”

“So you’re still… you? You’re not—”

“No.”

“Oh. Okay. That’s… good. So did you just decide to ring me up at three in the morning to give me a bunch of non-answers?”

“Don’t be a jackass,” she says with a grin. “I called because I miss you.”

Another pause. “Oh.”

Mary bites her knuckle and checks the window to make sure Nat is still haggling. “Tell me about your day?”

“Well… I got up at like five and went for a run. Then I got coffee from that place around the corner. Then I went to work and had to listen to Fury chewing me out while I analyzed gene mutations. It was all very exciting. Oh, and I had dinner with May and Ben and worried about you the entire time. They think we’re broken up or something. Ben didn’t say it, but I could tell he was relieved.”

“Do you agree with him?”

“In what way?”

“That it would be a good thing if we weren’t together.”

“We’re not together.”

Mary rolls her eyes. “You know what I mean.”

“No I don’t. I don’t know anything. You had your tongue down my throat a month ago and this morning I was sitting there wondering if there was a chance you had a crush on me.”

Mary laughs. “Shut up,” he says, and she can hear the smile in his voice. “It’s not funny. I’m… so much older than you and there’s all of this _stuff_.”

“But?”

“But I miss you too.”

“Good. They say absence makes the heart grow fonder or whatever the fuck, so maybe a little bit of space will do us good.”

“Oh, gee, another day of longing. What fun.”

Mary bites her lip. Nat is approaching, trudging angrily through the snow. “I have to go,” she says. 

“What? Fuck. Okay, um—”

“I love you, Richard.”

Her time runs out and the line goes dead. Mary hangs up the phone just as Nat jerks the door open. “So! Who were you talking to?”

“No one. Did you get us rooms?”

“I got a room,” she gripes, “with one bed.”

“That’s not so bad. It’ll be like old times,” Mary shrugs. “Come on, I’m tired.”

“So you’re really not gonna tell me who that was?”

“I’m really not.”

Nat throws her head back and groans at the night sky. “You’re no fun.”

* * *

It’s cold. They’re both quiet as they get ready for bed, and it’s only when they’re under the covers and wrapped up in each other that Nat says, “I grew up in a green house with a red door and I loved it because it was like Christmas all year long. I had a sister, but she left. Then she came back and everything was okay again. Our parents weren’t rich, but they were well off enough to make us happy. That’s okay because we didn’t need money anyway. We just needed each other.”

Mary can’t help smiling even as her eyes start to burn. “There was a white picket fence,” she adds on. “And a cat that used to come at night but never stayed. And nobody ever got hurt except on accident.”

Nat wraps her arms tighter around Mary. “I used to pretend it was real. When I would sneak into your room, I’d close my eyes and pretend we were normal sisters in a normal house, living in an American suburb and eating roasts every Sunday night. Maybe we were church girls one week if I was particularly fascinated by Catholicism that day, or maybe we were living on an army base and our dad was in the Air Force or something. It was always changing and I could never decide if our mother had red hair or brown hair.”

Mary laughs. “Red,” she says. “Our dad had brown hair.” 

“Well there you go. I should’ve just asked.”

With a fond smile, Mary runs her hand through Nat’s hair. “I wish it were true.”

“It could be.” Nat’s voice is all full of hope. “We could run away, buy a little house somewhere by the beach. You could garden while I walked Popper and we could eat fresh fruit every morning. And we could marry whoever we wanted and have babies and—”

She chokes on the words. Tears fill her eyes and she says, in the smallest voice, “Oh.”

“Nat—”

“No, it’s fine,” she forces a smile and wipes her eyes. “I just forget sometimes.”

“I’m so sorry,” Mary whispers. “God, I wish there was something I could do.”

“Well there’s not,” Nat says, succinct but not shortly. She buries her face back into the crook of Mary’s neck. “Besides, there’s other things. We could be world-class ballerinas and travel everywhere together. Wouldn’t it be fun to live out of a suitcase and get drunk in a new city every night?”

Mary hums. “I’m out of practise.”

“There’s a studio six blocks from my place. I practise when I can. You could start coming when this is all over.”

Something sours inside Mary. Her mouth twists. She doesn’t say, _It’ll never be over_ , the way that she wants to. Instead she nods. “That’d be nice.”

It’s a lie, just like the fantasy. These are the dreams of children. They’re not real and they never will be. 

* * *

They leave at dawn. It’s snowing so hard and the sky is so dark it still seems like night. Maria tilts her face up toward the thick black clouds overhead and sticks her tongue out to taste the snow. 

Nat snorts. “Get in the car, stupid.”

“Oh, and who’s got the stick up their butt now?”

“I never said you had a stick up your butt!”

“You implied it.”

“Bullshit. Drive, Petrov.”

She does, but the odds are against them: their piece of crap Camry breaks down an hour in and leaves them on a roadside. Mary spends a good few minutes bitching and moaning before popping the hood. The headlights, still functioning, are all there is to see by. Snow drifts down in light flurries and gets caught in their hair. 

“What’s wrong with it?”

“Hell if I know. There’s an emergency kit in the back, would you grab it for me?”

Nat fetches it. They lean over the busted engine. Mary’s no mechanic, but luckily enough the Black Widow Programme had involved education on anything and everything, so she knows the basics. 

“Radiator’s clogged,” she determines after a few minutes of inspection. 

“Oxygen sensor’s banged up,” Nat replies.

They work on their separate issues in silence. Mary finds it calming. She doesn’t mind getting her hands dirty, never has. 

After a while she speaks. 

“Sometimes I miss home. I know I shouldn’t. I think it and it feels like I’m spitting in the face of all the progress I’ve made.” She turns to Nat. “But then I think about those nights in the manor—the cold ones where we all had to huddle up in the same bed just to get warm enough to sleep—and I miss it.”

Nat’s eyes are irrevocably sad. “Me too,” she whispers. 

“I mean,” Mary leans away from the engine and wipes her greasy hands on her jeans, “we might’ve been dirty soviets, but we were family.” 

Nat snorts. “My thing is done. How about you?”

“Yeah. Go ahead and get in the car, I just… I need a second.”

Raised eyebrows. “You sure?”

“Yeah,” Mary nods. Much to her relief, Nat doesn’t press; she never really has where Mary’s concerned, actually, and so she’s free to practically collapse behind the hood of the car. Her whole body shakes from the exertion of everything and nothing. 

For five seconds she lets herself think about it: the possibility of not finding him, or finding something worse along the way. She lets the fear in: that _they_ will find her first and trigger Viper again and Richard will never know, and Nat will die at her hands, and she’ll be lost inside of her own head for the rest of her life. 

Then she takes a deep breath. Wipes her eyes. Slams the hood closed and gets back behind the wheel. 

* * *

The outpost near Austin is in a remote location; nothing but desert for miles. Mary’s pretty sure it’s a long shot considering that her memories of it put together something like a transition point: a place to switch cars or drop goods to be picked up by someone else, or even just to wash away the blood and patch up wounds. 

She’s kind of expecting it to be empty, but even so she knows they were here at one point and maybe she’ll be able to find something—a map to other cells or even access to the database. 

To her surprise, though, there’s a car out front: a bullet-ridden black SUV parked haphazardly in the driveway. 

She exchanges a look with Nat. It’s understood: Winter Soldier or no, they’re not alone. 

“I’ll go around the back,” Mary whispers. 

They draw their guns before they get out of the car, don’t bother closing the doors, and approach cautiously. Mary circles around the side and creeps up toward the back door, sliding the glass pane open slowly and stepping inside.

The AC isn’t on. It’s sweltering. There are weapons and bomb supplies scattered all over the kitchen. She and Nat meet in the middle and slowly advance down the hallway. 

All of the bedrooms are empty and unfurnished to boot. There’s nothing to hide behind. 

That leaves the master bedroom all the way at the end. The door is shut like all of the others had been, but the hairs on the back of Mary’s neck rise the closer they get. 

They’re good at this. They don’t make a sound. They might not even be breathing; she’s too caught up in the anticipation to notice. 

Heart pounding, Mary takes the left and Nat moves right. They pause on either side of the wall and their eyes meet across the distance. The silencer on Nat’s Beretta brushes her cheek when she nods. 

They move as one, rushing the door and kicking it in. 

It takes about three whole seconds for it to register that Soldat is standing on the other side pointing a gun right at them, and by that time he’s already firing off rounds. 

“Fuck,” Mary hisses, ducking on instinct. Nat does the same, except she rolls and comes up beside the Winter Soldier. She grabs at his gun and aims a roundhouse for his chest. He doesn’t even seem to feel it. The butt of his weapon connects with the side of her head and the impossible force behind it knocks Nat into the wall. 

Mary, by that time, is already on the bed. She launches off of it and gets her thighs around his neck, vaulting them downward. She pivots her weight at the last second and comes up with her knee against his throat. 

“James,” she says, desperate, “it’s _me_.”

Something sparks in his eyes: recognition, barely there before the fear takes over. And then the anger—the downright fury is what causes him to reach up with his metal arm and launch her off of his body. Mary tucks and rolls. 

Nat is already on him. She gets her arms around his throat and kicks up, her sharp kneecaps slamming into his side over and over. He grunts and twists, fighting right back. 

Mary doesn’t know where the hell any of their guns went. She just knows she can’t let him get away this time. 

“Come on, you son of a bitch,” she snaps, while Nat strikes him right between the legs and then clocks him when he stumbles. “You remember us, don’t you? You know who I am!”

“I don’t…” he shakes his head, panting, “I don’t know _anything_.”

They both go for him at the same time and their combined weight brings him down. Mary straddles his chest, her knees pressing against his upper arms, while Nat holds his legs down. Outwardly it shouldn’t be enough, but they’re enhanced. She puts her hands on either side of his face. “Your name is _James_. You were born in Brooklyn in 1918. It’s me, okay? It’s _Maria_.”

Her words are debilitating him even more than the fight, but it doesn’t last. “ _No!_ ” With a deep growl he breaks free and backhands her, knocking out yet another fucking tooth. Mary spits up blood. 

Nat goes for a discarded gun. It gives him pause, but then he lunges for her anyway like a total fucking idiot. Nat, of course, fires. 

“ _Hey!_ ” Mary screams. 

But he hardly even flinches. They go at it again and this time it’s rough and bloody; he’s grunting every time he has to move the arm she shot. Mary tackles him from behind and jabs down at his head with her elbow once, twice, three times; enough to make him dizzy, but not enough to really hurt him. 

Car doors slam outside. 

All three of them freeze. 

“Fuck,” Nat says. “We have to go.”

She uses the distraction to punch James right in the throat. He chokes and goes down. Mary rolls off. “We can’t just leave him—”

“We have to!” Her sister barks, grabbing her with her free hand. “Come on, out the window.”

“No!” Mary rips free of her grip. “We came all this way to save him, I’m not just gonna let them take him again—”

“Maria,” Nat hisses, “there are two of us and who the fuck knows how many of them. Now you either come with me, or you end up just like that again.”

They both look at Soldat, who is slowly rising to his feet, coughing. 

In the end Nat doesn’t really give her a choice. She hauls them both out and wastes no time shooting out the tires of the six HYDRA vehicles parked in the lawn. There’s shouting, yelling, retaliating with gunfire that misses. 

They duck inside the Camry and speed off. Bullets crack the rear windshield and then shatter it completely. Mary, behind the wheel, forces Nat’s head down. 

“Let me shoot—”

“Not yet!”

“Maria—”

She feels the rumble before she sees it: a sweltering white-orange inferno that rises skyward as the house explodes behind them. 

Mary brakes. They stare at one another. “ _Fuck_.”

* * *

As soon as they get a good ten miles of distance between them and the check point, Mary pulls off the road. For a long minute just they sit in silence, breathing hard. 

Nat, eyes round, says, “I’m so sorry—”

“God _dammit!_ ” Mary explodes at the same time. She hits the wheel, punches the visor, slams her fist against the horn and then throws open the door to go scream outside. 

And maybe vomit. Vomiting sounds like a good plan. 

“Maria,” Nat snaps urgently, following after, “hey, take a deep breath, okay?” 

“Oh, _fuck_ breathing! Fuck _all of it!_ What the fuck am I supposed to do now?! I can’t—I can’t _fix this—_ ”

“It’s not your job to fix it! I know you’re upset it didn’t work out—”

“I’m not upset, I’m _pissed!_ He’s always gonna be their weapon, don’t you get that?! 

“Maria,” Nat takes a cautious step forward. “What are you talking about? The house blew up. It—”

“He’s not dead.”

“How can you know that?”

“I just do, okay? Whatever the hell that was, it wasn’t enough to take him out, and now he’s gonna be broken and trapped inside of himself because there’s no one he loves enough to go back to, no one who loves him enough to save him—”

“You can’t be sure of that—”

“Oh yeah? Then where are they, huh? Where?!”

“Maria, calm down.”

She doesn’t register the fear in Nat’s voice. The anger isn’t going away, it’s only building; a rolling boil of hate and frustration in her belly, churning with every bitter thought. “ _Fuck!_ ” She screeches again, and this time there’s a visible aftershock: an actual, seismic wave that knocks Nat back a good few feet and momentarily lifts the car. 

“Jesus,” Nat hisses, “hey, come on. Breathe with me, okay? _Calm down._ Look at the sun for me? Just… just watch it go down. Everything is gonna be fine.”

It’s a flat out lie but Mary’s too drained to argue. She wipes her bloody nose roughly and does as Nat asks. Surprisingly enough, it sort of helps. 

“It’s always gonna go down,” Nat says quietly, taking Mary’s hand. “And it’ll always come up again no matter what.”

“Nat…”

“Bad things happen, okay? Not everything works out the way it should. But the world isn’t over, got it? There’s still tomorrow.”

Mary rests her forehead against her sister’s and closes her burning eyes. “Thank you.”

“For what?”

“Helping me. Being here. Not hating me.”

Nat shakes her head. “I could never hate you, stupid. You’re a part of me.” 

“The best part,” she teases after a beat. Nat laughs and it’s the best sound; it has the inverse effect of the anger—a rush of momentary calm overtakes her. She turns around, raking a hand through her bloody, sooty hair. “You’re driving.”

“What? Why?”

“Because if I drive I’m gonna run someone over.”

“God,” Nat gripes. “Like the risk is any lower with me behind the wheel.”

And despite the fact that Mary says she’s not upset, she still cries a little bit on the way back to New York. 

* * *

Fury calls Nat right as they’re dropping the beat up rental off (which they agreed to split damages for). 

Mary only picks up half the conversation. She watches Nat’s face and listens to her clipped, matter-of-fact tone. Her sister doesn’t look pleased by the end of the little talk. “Yeah,” is the last thing she says before hanging up.

“Good news?”

Nat looks sick. “I just got my first assignment.”

“He assigned you somewhere? But I thought he’d be fucking pissed about us taking off.”

“Apparently it had the opposite effect. Anyway, I leave for Belgravia in two hours.”

“Nat—”

“He said it’s gonna be a while. An indefinite amount of time, actually. It’s undercover work, very hush hush.”

Mary narrows her eyes. Abruptly, she grabs her sister’s hand. “Don’t do that.”

“Do what?”

“Get all closed off. This isn’t the end, alright? We’ll see each other again.”

And it’s like she’s just a little girl again, all tearful eyes, her heart on her sleeve. Her lower lip quivers when she asks, “Promise?”

Mary kisses both of her cheeks. “I promise.”

A nod and a step back from each of them. Mary looks down at their twined fingers. “Be safe, okay?”

“Yeah, um,” Nat wipes her cheek. “You too.”

For a heartbeat they stand in the cold, shivering, and then Nat hugs her. Mary is more mechanical about it, slow to warm up, but she does eventually. “ _You are made of marble,_ ” she whispers in her sister’s ear; sacred words passed between them in Russian like a secret. 

Nat nods. Neither of them say anything else. They don’t have to. 

* * *

When Mary gets back to the house, it’s dark and outwardly appears empty. She doesn’t call out for Richard purely because she just doesn’t have the energy for that. Instead she shuffles through, dropping her bag, kicking off her boots along the way, and finds him out back having a smoke. 

“The Winter Soldier used to write on them,” she says, by way of greeting. 

Richard rounds on her. His eyes are wide and he drops the cigarette, scuffing it out with his shoe. Mary’s about to say something else, though she’s honestly not sure what and she forgets the instant he kisses her. 

His lips are warm and his mouth moves against her own and it’s like they’re speaking without words: it’s just feelings, it’s just him pulling her tight against his body and it’s the taste of him and the smell of him. Overwhelming, intoxicating; she could drown in it, she could die like this and be happy. 

Then he leans away. For a second it’s quiet. 

“I love you too,” he says. 

It’s funny: she’d forgotten she’d told him that. After everything that’s happened over the last couple of days, it had completely slipped her mind that those three words, damning and terrifying as they are, had blurted out of her mouth. In the immediate aftermath she’d hoped he hadn’t even heard them, that maybe they’d been disconnected before he could. 

_Love is for children._ That’s what they’d been taught in the programme. 

But here’s a man who loves her. He’s only tall because she’s so fucking short and he buttons all of his shirts wrong and he doesn’t know how to eat pasta to save his own life. He can spend hours staring at the night sky naming all of the constellations and reciting all of the stories behind them, and he’s dangerously smart but he’s so, so fucking _stupid_ sometimes. He is the only person who has ever held her like she’s made of glass.

“Richard,” she whispers, “take me to bed.”

There are no more arguments. Only a hitch in his breath as he picks her up, a groan when she kisses him open-mouthed, and her name on his lips when they fall onto the mattress upstairs.

* * *

“Where did you go?”

Mary cracks an eye open. It’s been a good hour or so since she got back and they’ve mostly been lying in the dark of his bedroom, her head pillowed on his chest, his hand in her hair. She doesn’t feel like moving or speaking and definitely doesn’t want to rehash the chaos of losing James a third time. 

Lazily, she runs her fingers down his abdomen, tracing the definition of his muscles. “There are some things about my past that I can’t tell you.”

“Why not?”

She turns her head to look at him. “The secrets don’t belong to me. Besides, I just… I just want to leave it. I want to move on, okay? I’m so sick of chasing ghosts. Can you accept that?”

“Mary, you were gone for three days—”

“But I’m back now. And I’m not going anywhere else.”

He takes a deep breath, running a hand down his face like it’s all too much for him, like _she’s_ too much. Then, “Okay.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. Really. I’m not gonna push you. But you know that you can talk to me, right? You can tell me anything no matter how bad it sounds in your head.”

Mary closes her eyes, relief overcoming paranoia, exhaustion taking hold. She kisses his chest. “Thank you.”

He doesn’t say anything to that. At least, not verbally. His response is to pull her up so that they’re eye-level and kiss her. Mary melts against his touch. She could stay like this for the rest of her life and swears she’s never wanted to be someone else’s so badly.

* * *

“Oh! Oh my god—”

Mary had already heard someone coming. She’d lain there against Richard, tense and planning to grab the gun from the nightstand if necessary, but the person who bursts into the room is only May. 

She leaves a few seconds later all flustered. Mary stifles a laugh by biting her tongue and grabs Richard’s faded Van Halen t-shirt to throw over her head. She chases the other woman out. 

“May! Hey, what are you doing here?”

May is halfway down the stairs but stops dead, cheeks dark with embarrassment. She looks put together aside from that: high-waisted jeans and a pretty floral blouse, half of her hair braided into a crown like the way Yelena would wear it sometimes. “Mary. Hi. Um—I didn’t see anything.”

Mary grins. “Is everything alright?”

“No, yeah, I just—Richard seemed upset last night so I thought I would stop by before my shift and bring him some coffee, but I wasn’t expecting…”

She nods slowly, still smiling because she’s privately decided that May Reilly is going to prove her theory that no human being could ever be classified a saint very, very wrong. “That’s okay. When’s your shift?”

“In an hour or so.”

“Have you eaten yet?”

* * *

May asks a good three times if there’s anything she can do, to which Mary replies that there’s nothing. Finally the other woman caves and settles at the kitchen counter to watch. “I’m not a very good cook,” she confesses somewhat morosely. “My mom was _amazing_. She used to whip up these complicated Italian dishes in no time and there was always dinner on the table at the end of the day. I swear to god the woman could be keeling over from the flu and she’d still find a way to feed us.”

Mary adds a bit of spice to the eggs. “Is she still around?”

“No. She died when I was around sixteen or so. Breast cancer. Ever since I’ve been trying to cook up all of her old recipes but I must be cursed because I burn everything I touch.”

“It’s all about patience,” Mary says, reciting what Richard had told her a few months back. “You just have to… get a feeling for it. Trust your instincts.”

May absorbs that. Then she asks, pretty abruptly actually, “So when did you and Richard get back together?”

“Hmm? Oh, we never broke up.” At May’s raised eyebrow she adds, “We were sort of on and off.”

“But you still bought a house together?”

Technically it’s a safe house and _technically_ May shouldn’t even be here, much less know where it is, but Richard apparently doesn’t give a shit about that rule. Mary shrugs. “We’re renting.”

“Explains why it’s so empty, I guess. What was wrong with the old place? Too small?”

Mary’s heart starts to pick up pace a little bit. She hadn’t quite expected to be interrogated by someone who, outwardly at least, puts up such a mellow front. But appearances can be deceiving; they learnt that first thing in the programme. _Then_ they were taught how to fool their way out of just about every kind of conversation known to man.

“It’s just, uh, closer to work.”

“Oh? What’s your work?”

“I’m studying genetics,” she decides right then and there, “I’m interning at a lab.”

“Fancy,” May comments breezily. “And Richard, what did he have to say about all that?”

“ _May_.”

“Yeah?”

“I love Richard. I have no plans to hurt him or manipulate him into anything he doesn’t want or—”

“Oh, honey, I’m not worried about _Richard_ ,” May says, and Mary finds herself surprised for the first time in a while. “I’m worried about _you_. I mean, you’re so young, you know? Just how old are you anyway?”

“Twenty,” she lies.

“Exactly! You’re still figuring yourself out and becoming and there are so many changes that come along with that. You could be a completely different person next week! I just don’t want you to go all in without hedging your bets, you know?”

Mary takes the pan off the stove and serves two portions of scrambled eggs. “I’m pretty dead set on the person I am right now.”

May sighs. “If you say so. I just don’t wanna see you get hurt.”

“Richard is a great guy—”

“Oh, of course,” May cuts in quickly, “but he can be so… flighty. Sometimes it seems like he has this whole other life that he won’t even tell _Ben_ about and I… I don’t know. I worry about him, too. I worry about _everyone_.”

“Well, you don’t have to worry about me. I can handle myself. Hey, Richard,” she adds on at the end, not even looking up as she dolls out bacon. “Breakfast?”

Richard, suspended with shock in the doorway, blinks. “You’re well aware I’ll consume anything put in front of me. Is there coffee?”

“Yes, and it’s all for me.”

“The entire pot.”

“How else am I supposed to get through the day?”

“But—”

“Shut up and eat your bacon.”

He sighs. “Yes, ma’am.”

Mary smiles to herself as he grudgingly sits down and accepts the food. She forgoes a portion for herself and instead fills up a gigantic steaming mug of straight caffeine. May strikes up conversation with Richard and Mary watches them: the familiarity and ease of their body movement, the way that May pulls faces and it makes him laugh. They have inside jokes. They’re family. 

“That sound good to you, Mary?”

“Sorry?”

May is grinning. “I _said_ , since I’m off early tonight we should go out and do something. Maybe see a movie? I hear Happy Accidents is playing and personally I think the lead actress is a knockout.”

“You’re only saying that because you look like her.”

“I do not. My face and her face are completely different.”

“Bull. You could be twins. Anyway, are you in, Peters?”

Mary rolls her eyes. “Beats spending the night in with you watching Jeopardy. Or worse: the news.”

May wrinkles her nose. “He watches the news?”

“It’s important to stay up to date on current events!”

* * *

After May leaves, Mary turns to Richard. “I like her.”

“She likes you.”

“You think? How can you tell?”

“Believe me, when May Reilly doesn’t like a person, it’s obvious.” He pauses. “Well, I should probably get ready for the lab.”

“Good plan,” Mary says, “I’m coming with you.”

“What? Why?”

“Because I might’ve lied to May’s face about what I do for a living and in order to keep up the ruse, you’re gonna have to teach me everything you know.” She smiles and pats his arm. “I think it’ll be fun.”

* * *

May hadn’t said anything about Ben coming.

It’s not that she doesn’t like Ben, it’s really not, but it’s also not like he’s ever said a kind word to her. Granted, they’ve only spoken like three times in total and once had only been in passing over the phone (she’d answered and immediately handed it off to Richard). 

Still, she remains perfectly pleasant on the outside while they wait in line. Inwardly, she’s somewhat fixated on him: studying the way that he moves—awkwardly, clumsily, like he had never expected his body to fill out so much and still doesn’t know what to do with the damn thing; the way that he speaks—with his hands like Richard, and their eyes light up the same way when they get excited about something, too. He’s not a bad guy. If anything, he’s even more of an open-book than Richard, the kind of person to wear his heart right on his sleeve. This is a man without secrets, a man that probably lives by a code of morals he does his best to never deter from, who’s convinced that because he’s got a few inches on his big brother and muscle to boot, he’s gotta be the one to take care of the guy. 

So it’s no surprise, really, when he blurts, “I’m gonna go get us some snacks. Mary, can you help me carry?”

And May, who has a sixth sense for awkwardness and must have heard a thing or two from Ben, says, “I can help you carry, baby.”

“No, it’s fine,” Mary and Ben say at the same time. 

May blinks. “Alright then. Extra butter on the popcorn, okay? And Twizzlers.”

“And Junior Mints,” Richard tacks on, to which Mary wrinkles her nose. “What, you don’t like ’em?”

“Why would I eat Junior Mints when I could just swallow an entire tube of toothpaste and get the same effect?”

She leaves him sputtering over that. Ben follows after with his hands in his pockets, shoulders hunched as a result. He looks like a teddy bear that accidentally got injected with steroids. 

“What do you like?”

“Hmm?”

“Snacks, Benjamin.”

“Oh, um, same as May. And Milk Duds.”

“Now there’s a man with taste,” Mary proclaims, standing up on her tip-toes to see the end of the line. It’s ridiculously long but, then again, it _is_ a Friday night in New York. 

“Most people call me Ben, y’know.”

“Pardon?”

“You called me Benjamin.”

Mary grins. “I know.”

“It’s just that I’ve always kind of hated my name.”

“I can understand that,” she says idly. “I mean, it is pretty awful.” 

She’s partially teasing and partially trying to assess the edges of his patience. He surprises her (and himself) by laughing. Then it fades a little. “Listen, I know I was kind of a jackass to you before—”

“You don’t have to explain—”

“No, I totally do. It’s just that… Our parents died a few years back and it was real hard on Rich. He started closing himself off, you know? He pulled away from me and it broke my heart, ’cuz meanwhile I’m here almost two years younger trying to carry myself after that, and then it turns out I gotta carry him too—and don’t get me wrong, I’d carry that stupid asshole to the ends of the earth, but it uh… it scared me, you know? Woke me up a little bit, too. Ever since I’ve just been kind of on edge where he’s concerned. I just don’t want to see him get hurt.”

Mary absorbs that and then turns to face him. “The thing is, Benji, I’ve been dating said stupid asshole for long enough to notice that he’s protecting you right back by closing himself off. He doesn’t want you to feel like you have to take care of him. He’s got some kind of a complex, I guess. Anyway, my point is: I don’t want to see him get hurt, either, so just… know that you’re not the only one looking out for him anymore, okay?”

Ben blinks. Then he grins. “Okay.”

And that’s how she becomes friends with Ben Parker.

* * *

There’s a museum uptown. 

It’s not really a museum. It’s an apartment. Mary’s read about it’s similar counterpart, the Anne Frank museum in Amsterdam. This one is of course not the same, but their essences follow a theme: time’s breath held, a moment captured and perfectly preserved. 

Mary finds herself inside it one day in the early morning, far before it’s due to get packed—which is normally around noon, when all of the tourists finally make it away from Manhattan to flood the other boroughs of the city. 

There’s one other person here: a woman in her late forties to early fifties, holding a clipboard and taking notes. She must be some kind of caretaker. 

All of this leaves Mary free to roam the little matchbox-sized apartment. There are only three rooms and they’re all virtually the same square footage; the bedroom only has space for one nightstand and the table only seats two—and she notes, absently, that there is only _one_ bed. 

She tries to imagine Soldat here cooking behind the wood-burning stove, wiping his hands on that flower-patterned towel; or maybe watering the withered, dead plants in the windowsill. And was it him that plucked a rose and put it in water, left dried up and yellowed in a vase on the mantle? 

Or was it Steve Rogers?

Is there a reason there’s only one toothbrush in the place or is that because Soldat took his own when he shipped out? 

Did they use the table or did they maybe sit on the counter to eat the way Mary does? Did they ever lay out on that fire escape smoking and baking in the noon-day sun? 

Did he really live here? Is he real at all? 

Or is he, like they all say, just a myth? A phantom that haunts her dreams? 

He’s fading just like everything else. He’s becoming ill-defined. All that’s left are scattered moments frozen in place in the back of her head. 

He read to her once, but was that before or after she left the programme? What had the book been, anyway? She tries to remember and finds herself scanning the spines on the small shelf in the living area, as if she’ll find it in his personal collection, too. 

There’s a framed photo on the table by the door: a tiny little black and white portrait of a girl with gap teeth and brown curls. 

“Who is this?” Mary asks the caretaker.

The woman looks up, startled as if she’d forgotten she wasn’t alone. “Her? That’s Barnes’ sister, Rebecca.”

Mary returns her gaze to the photo. “Becca,” she whispers, and then asks louder, “Is she still around?”

“Last I heard she had a place not too far from here. Sometimes she visits but not lately. I think it’s too painful. You could probably look her up in the phone book—”

Mary is already gone.

* * *

“You’re not Alice,” is the first thing that Rebecca Barnes-Proctor says to her. 

“No, ma’am,” Mary agrees.

“You’re also not a nurse, are you?” 

Mary, standing in the woman’s room in a pair of pale pink scrubs and holding a medical chart, shakes her head. She shouldn’t be surprised: this is James’s sister, after all. 

Rebecca nods to herself. “The nurses always have some kind of a joke for me in the morning, and you’re not new because if you were, there would be all sorts of gossip about you. So: who the hell are you and what the hell are you doing in my bedroom?”

Mary bites her lip. She tries to speak and fails. Rebecca takes pity on her and pats her paisley bedspread. “Come sit.”

“Your brother isn’t dead.”

The words rip themselves out of her mouth and hang, suspended, in the air between them. Rebecca sucks in a sharp breath and just holds it there for a good five seconds. When she lets it out, her entire body seems to give way: years of tension and heartache and grief spill off of her shoulders. “And just how in the hell do you figure that?”

“Because I saw him,” Mary says, taking a cautious step forward. “I was with him. I… I grew up with him, ma’am—”

“Oh please, don’t call me ma’am. It makes me feel old.”

Mary blinks. “Okay. Well. I know it doesn’t make any sense, but I need you to know that I’m telling you the truth—”

Another interruption, this time in the form of a weathered finger against her lips. Rebecca then gestures for Mary to come closer. “They’re watching,” she whispers. “They’re always watching.”

Mary is quick. She pretends to take Rebecca’s temperature. “Then they’re listening, too. These people don’t take half measures.”

“Listening? To _me?_ Please. I got rid of all those bugs ages ago.”

“You’re sure?”

“Don’t second guess me, honey. It’ll only end in disappointment for you. They plant another one every week or so and I flush it down the toilet or smash it with my shoe. They like to put them in the lights or the phone, but I even found one in that electrical socket there,” she jerks her head toward it, “nosy bastards. But the windows—I’ve seen them lurking in that building across the way. Sometimes I walk around naked just to give ’em a good show.”

Mary laughs but it feels more like she’s been punched in the stomach. She moves on to checking blood pressure. “They haven’t hurt you?”

“Oh, they’d never do that. I pretend I don’t notice them, they pretend they haven’t noticed me not noticing. Now tell me: what was he like? Is he okay?”

Mary sees no reason to lie. This woman would see right through it and she already has more respect for her than just about anyone on planet Earth. 

“No, he’s not… he’s not okay at all. They’re hurting him. They use—electroconvulsive therapy, have you ever heard of that?”

Rebecca stares with wide eyes. “You mean they’re electrocuting him?”

“Yes. It makes him forget. He doesn’t know who he is. He doesn’t remember his own name. They’re using him as a weapon and as a result he’s become the most renowned and allusive assassin of our time. He taught me… he taught me almost everything that I know about killing.”

Rebecca stares. “You don’t say.”

Mary purses her lips. She pulls up a chair. “He was given a serum like the one they gave Captain America. It made him stronger and faster, and it also… he healed quicker. His wounds, and also—also his brain. Over time, if he was awake for long enough—”

“I’m sorry? Awake? How do you mean?”

“Rebecca, James isn’t physically older than twenty-seven or so. At least, that’s what I figure.” 

The woman turns even whiter than she was already. “How is that possible?”

“The serum slows aging. But also… they freeze him in-between missions for months, even _years_ at a time. It’s called cryogenesis.”

Rebecca shoots to her feet and starts to pace. “You mean they’re keeping my big brother in a fridge somewhere?”

“Essentially.”

She stops. “Let’s not stray. What were you saying about his brain?”

“It heals, too. Eventually. When I was with him the first time around it took a long time for him to get anything back, but he—God, he used to call me ‘Becca’ sometimes. I didn’t know you were his sister, I figured maybe he’d had a daughter or something and they’d killed her, but I was at the museum today and I saw your picture and—”

“That fucking museum,” Rebecca hisses vehemently as she sits back down. “My poor fucking brothers have their _life_ on display and they aren’t even here to defend themselves. Thank god people are just oblivious enough to not notice the minor details—”

“Like the one bed?”

Rebecca looks up, cheeks flushed like she hadn’t even meant to say any of that out loud. “Yes. Like the one bed.”

“So you mean they were…?”

“I don’t think _they_ even knew what they were, so I don’t think it’s fair of us to speculate. But yes, in some capacity, I think… well I don’t know. I used to think, but it _was_ the Great Depression and all. Not like they could really afford anything more than what they had.”

Mary runs a hand through her hair. She pours the older woman a glass of water from the pitcher on the nightstand. “I’m so sorry for springing this on you.”

“Oh please, don’t be. I always suspected something, you know. Figured I was just deluding myself. It was just… it was a strange time. When Steve wrote me that he’d died I refused to believe it. Didn’t even do shiva and I’ve always… I always felt so terrible about that, but now I know my gut was right.”

“I didn’t know he was Jewish.”

She hums. “He wasn’t very public about it. Got made fun of in school and all, but when the war started—oh, that boy got angry. _I_ got angry. We started to get loud with it. I think for him, that anger was a sort of fuel. He used to write me these long letters full of prayers and lines from the Torah. He even made me this little Star of David necklace here—” she pulls it from under her sweater, “told me to wear it so everyone could see. And I did. Now I keep it closer to the heart.”

Mary stares at it, the little five points glittering in the sun. “The letters,” she whispers, “do you still have them?”

Rebecca stands in reply, shuffles over to her dresser, and removes a small polished wooden box from the top drawer. “Be careful with them.”

“Of course.”

Carefully she opens the box and fingers out the first letter. It’s a little worn and crumpled, but still perfectly legible. Inside, she’s surprised to see elegant cursive handwriting. It’s dated March, 1944. 

_Dearest, darling, Becca, the apple of my eye, I hope this finds you well. How are the twins doing? How are you? I know they can be a handful, believe me, and with Granny sick they’re probably running you pretty ragged. I wish I was there to help._

_One word to describe the front: wet. It’s been raining so often the ground ain’t even ground anymore, it’s just sludge. I’ve got mud in my boots and mud in my hair and mud in my fuckin’ ass crack—do me a favour and don’t let Granny read this letter—and I can’t remember what dry socks feel like._

_The rations don’t have taste and they always leave you hungry, but it’s better than nothing. At least I don’t have to worry whether or not I’m ever gonna eat again, you know? One pro of war: you’re always fed something._

_I know you have fine taste so I’ll spare you the literal descriptors of my surroundings and just say, I’m getting on. I’m alive and that’s what counts, I guess._

_How is Steve? Is he still complaining that they won’t let him enlist? Give him a good punch for me if he really gets going—and remember, don’t tuck in your thumb when you make a fist._

_Give the kids a kiss for me. Tell Granny I love her, the crazy old bat. And pray for me, would you? I am always praying for you right back. And remember: Jerusalem is west of our house, not east._

_I love you more than you could ever know._

_Go dancing for me,_

_James._

When Mary looks up it’s like she’s being ripped out of another world. Rebecca is watching her, so Mary dries her tears quickly and carefully puts the letter back in its envelope. 

“I didn’t really know him,” she says slowly. “Not like that. I didn’t know that he could be so...”

“Uncouth?”

Mary grins. “That.” 

Rebecca takes a deep breath. Then she reaches for Mary’s hand. “Take the letters.”

“What?”

“I’m loaning them to you. Get to know him. You’ve got until next Tuesday to bring them all back in pristine condition, understood?”

“Are you sure?”

Rebecca leans back. “Never second guess me.”

Mary almost smiles. She gingerly tucks the box under her arm and stands. “I’m gonna find him, okay? I’m gonna bring him home, I promise.”

“Oh, honey, I know that already. You wouldn’t be here if it weren’t true. Now hang back, what’s your name? I’ll have to add you to my visitor’s list so you don’t have to espionage your way in next time.”

That gets a grin out of her. “My name is Maria Petrov,” she says, “but I go by Mary Peters.”

A snort. “Clever. I’ll have more questions for you next time after I have a week to think them all up. Now skedaddle before they get suspicious, would you?”

Mary nods but, with one hand on the door handle, asks, “He danced?”

Rebecca scoffs. “That idiot breathed to dance. Every night he could, he was in the bars and clubs wearing the soles of his shoes down. Got some serious skirt doing that.”

With an incredulous laugh, Mary leaves. 

* * *

Ben Parker has taken to bursting into their house like Kramer from Seinfeld. 

On one such day, Mary is actually scrubbing blood out of one of her favourite shirts in the aftermath of a small mission to Boston. She’d been assigned by Fury to escort a targeted computer scientist to base for questioning because apparently the idiot had hacked into some of HYDRA’s networks. They’d been shot at on their way back into the city and Mary had taken the brunt of the fire. Now her side is bandaged and her hands are stained red and it’s growing more and more apparent that she’s just gonna have to throw the damn thing out. 

“Mary!” Ben says as he walks in, “How the hell are ya?”

Mary quickly pulls the tap so the red-stained water drains. She washes her hands. “Not bad,” she lies. “You ever heard of knocking?”

“You could have prevented this by not giving me a key.”

“Believe me, I regret it. So what’s up?”

He takes a deep breath and then, “Roller skating.”

Mary blinks. She holds up a finger, turns to the stairwell, and shouts, “Richard! Your idiot brother has a proposition for you!” 

“ _What?_ ” Richard shouts back. 

“A proposition!”

“ _I heard that! I meant what’s the proposition?!_ ”

“He wants to take you roller skating!”

Ben makes an offended noise while Richard comes practically tripping down the stairs, rumpled and disgusted. “Did I hear you right? Did the words ‘roller skating’ actually come out of your mouth? _Roller skating?_ ”

“ _Yes_ ,” Ben says, offended. “And it’s not even my idea, but her birthday is coming up and I suggested it—jokingly, mind you—and now she’s stuck on it so just—please?” 

“Roller-skating,” Richard deadpans for the second time. 

“I know, okay? I know! But she’s really into the seventies and it’s her only fault—”

Mary gasps. “That woman is faultless and the seventies were a great time.”

“Um, Vietnam, Watergate, the start of the Soviet-Afghan war—” Richard chokes and starts coughing. Ben keeps going, “that gross brown color all the photos had, people eating Jell-O for like, every meal? Need I say more?”

Mary shrugs. “I still think they were groovy. Might as well do it.” 

“Oh yeah? What changed your mind?”

Mary glares at Ben. “Well unlike _you_ , I’ll do literally anything to make May Reilly happy.”

“Ooo,” Richard whispers, “burn.”

* * *

May Reilly is happy. 

She’s actually not a bad skater and confesses that she used to come to this rink with her dad before he passed away. Mary watches her twist around and blow a kiss toward the sidelines where Ben is standing like an idiot because he’s afraid to embarrass himself.

Richard rolls up to her and squints. “You’re good at this. Why are you good at this?”

Mary skates in a circle around him. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m good at everything.”

He laughs. “Funny, but I’m serious. Don’t tell me they had a rink where you come from?”

“They did,” she spins for him, “but it was an ice rink.”

“You figure skated,” he assesses. 

“Every day for three hours,” she says. “Five on weekends. And I can do a lot more than skate on the ice.”

It’s true: she’s fully capable of killing on it, too. It had been Madame B’s idea to have the girls train hand-to-hand when skating as well as learn pretty routines. 

Richard follows after her. “Do you miss it?”

“Sometimes. Not as much as I miss dancing, though.”

“You danced, too?”

“I was a ballerina,” she proclaims with a grin. “The best one, even after I busted my knee.”

Richard raises an eyebrow. “I haven’t noticed any knee issues.”

“Well it doesn’t bother me anymore,” she says, thinking of the serum. As excruciatingly uncomfortable as the memory is, the side-effects are more than welcome. “But I don’t miss any of it as much as I like spending all day in the lab with you.”

And that’s true: the best part of her day is probably finishing her training routines—she’s now moved onto training _other_ agents instead of wasting time proving her capabilities—and joining Richard in the sub-levelled genetics department. 

He’d kind of been astounded at how quickly she’d picked up the basics. Now they’re moving into increasingly complex territory and it still isn’t exactly a challenge. Mary hadn’t thought twice about it until he’d blurted, frustrated, “Just what the hell is your IQ?! Three-thousand?!”

“I’ve always been a quick learner,” she’d told him, bemused. “How else could I have learned to speak seven different languages and memorised every single country’s capitals and customs? Besides, it’s not that hard.”

“Not that hard?! Not that _hard?!_ I studied this shit for nine years!” 

“Well,” she’d shrugged, “I don’t think it would have taken you nearly as long if the American education system wasn’t so fucked up. I mean, imagine all the time you could have saved if you hadn’t been required to take all of those stupid general education classes and worthless prerequisites? You should be able to just study the one damn thing in my opinion. We only spent a few days on every topic in my school.”

“Your school? You mean the Academy of Upcoming Murderesses?”

Mary had rolled her eyes. “Just because there were bad intentions behind the education doesn’t mean the way we were educated was wrong.”

“Uh-huh.”

“ _Uh-huh._ ”

Richard had looked up from his microscope and stuck his tongue out at her. Then he’d handed her a sample to study. “TS-743. Give me results by the end of the day please and thank you.”

“And if I say no?”

“Then I’ll be really sad.”

Now, he reaches out to spin her and she laughs when he almost trips. “Don’t make fun of me!”

“I’m _not_ ,” she promises, “it’s just that you’re worse than a newborn horse.”

Richard won’t have that. He grabs her by the waist and picks her up, ignoring her screeches of protest, and when they both topple over and she scrapes her elbow the pain can hardly be felt because she’s laughing so hard. 

* * *

“Wanna ditch these assholes?”

May raises her head as she’s zipping up her boots. “Where to?”

“There’s this little bakery I go to sometimes not far from mine and Richard’s. They have the _best_ lemon cakes.”

* * *

It’s late summer. Rebecca’s got the windows open because the AC unit in the home is busted. The curtains shift behind Mary, lifted with the light breeze, gauzy and floral. 

“What was Steve Rogers like?”

Rebecca hums, more focused on the scarf she’s knitting than Mary herself, who’s mostly been combing over the letters for the last twenty or so minutes. Some of them are actually to Rogers himself, probably taken after his death.

“He was a scrawny little thing last I saw him,” Rebecca says eventually. “They showed him on TV once and I got to see what they’d done to him. I remember being sad and happy about it at the same time.”

“Why sad?”

“It was all he ever wanted—to be strong like that, I mean. He was always picking fights and always losing, too. I just… I always wondered if he knew that the muscles weren’t what gave him his steel, you know?”

Mary chews on that. “What were they like together?”

“Brothers,” is Rebecca’s immediate response. “Maybe something more, I don’t know. They went everywhere together, did everything together. Everyone thought Steve was in love with James, but no one really figured that James loved him right back. He always had a different dame under his arm, see, and… well, I don’t know. I’ve always wondered if maybe it was just for show.”

“It didn’t have to be for show. You can like both.”

Rebecca glances up from her project. “What’s the word for that again?”

“Bisexual.”

“Right, bisexual. I think that’s what Bucky must have been. I mean, God, they shaved each other’s beards and slept in the same bed!”

Mary rests her cheek on her hand, smiling a little. “Was he a good brother?”

“The best brother,” Rebecca says after a small pause. She swallows. “He used to braid my hair every morning and walk me to school, and even when he was at that age where all the boys tried to pretend they didn’t love their sisters, he’d hold my hand the whole way and sometimes he’d—he’d pick me up and spin me around in front of the whole class and plant one on me, right on my nose.” 

Rebecca has tears in her eyes now, and Mary feels bad just like she always does when she makes the older woman cry. 

“He used to braid my hair, too.”

Rebecca looks up. “Yeah?”

“Yeah. He was… really confused all the time. Sometimes he’d be in the middle of something, following orders, complying—and then he’d look up like he had no idea where he was or what he was doing there. And when he was sad he would start to talk the way you do, in that accent. And he was always smoking. He even—”

“Wrote on his cigarettes,” Rebecca finishes. “I had… I’d forgotten about that. Oh my god.”

Mary reaches for her hand. “You okay?”

“Okay? I’m fine, sweetheart. Better than I have been in a long time. Now lean forward and let me see if this scarf fits you right, would you?”

“It’s for me?”

“Who else? Racist Larry down the hall? I don’t think so. Besides, this shade of green wouldn’t suit his jaundice.”

Mary laughs and does as the older woman asks. Exactly a year from now Rebecca Barnes-Proctor will be presenting her with a collection of poorly-knitted onesies and baby hats and socks, instead, and it’ll feel the same as this: warm all over, like having family, like knowing someone is looking out for her. 

* * *

“Mary?”

She rolls over in the dark. “Yeah?”

“I know this is sort of a touchy subject and all, and I don’t even…” he takes a deep breath. “We haven’t really discussed gene therapy.”

“What are you talking about? We went over that way back in the beginning—”

“I mean for _you_ ,” he says. “For your superpowers, you know?” 

Mary’s heart starts to pound. “Why would we even discuss that at all?” 

“I’ve just been thinking, is all. I mean, you can’t really control them and what if you freak out in front of May or Ben one day? How can we possibly explain that?”

“That won’t happen.”

“You don’t _know_ that,” he cuts across. “I mean, what if you get scared on a mission and hurt someone? We know that they’re intertwined with your emotions—” 

“I never wanted to be like this,” she says hotly. “My grandmother _sold me_ to the Soviets because of what I can do, because I…”

“Because you what?”

She shuts her eyes tight and just says it. 

“I killed my grandfather, Richard.”

He sits up all the way and flicks on the light. Then he leans over her. “What?”

“You heard me.”

“I’m actually not sure that I did.”

“I was five. He was a farmer and—Babushka told me to go help him with the work and so I did, but then he—there was this goat and it had a gimp leg and he told me not to be scared but I was anyway, and when it started bleeding—there was this dark red line across its throat and I remember screaming and then… he was dead.”

Richard gapes. Then, abruptly, his mouth snaps shut. “He killed a goat in front of you?”

“Yeah.”

“And then you killed him?”

“ _Richard_ ,” she says, practically sobbing.

“No, no, I’m not—I’m just trying to understand this clearly. How did you kill him?”

“I don’t know. There was like this… wave of energy and it knocked him back into the wall—like what I did to you in Canada, but less concentrated. He hit his head and died.”

“So you didn’t like, actively choke him to death or something.”

Mary blinks. Then she sits up, forcing him to move out of the way. “You really think I could do that? That I’m even _capable_ of something like that?”

He runs a hand through his hair. “ _No_ , I’m just trying to assess—”

“What, whether or not I’m a complete sociopath?” She stands up on the bed. “I didn’t want _any of this_ , do you get that? You chose this life! You chose to be a fighter! I was handed off like a prized cow and brought up to be a killer! I didn’t know anything else, I didn’t know how to be good or kind or merciful, I was told those were weaknesses and that the _only_ values of merit were to be completely efficient and utterly ruthless! You try growing up in an environment like that and coming out the other side alive! They used to take girls out into the snow and _shoot them in the fucking head_ if they weren’t up to scratch!”

The mirror on the wall shatters into a thousand shards. She hadn’t even realised it was shaking. At the same time, the window opposite it does the very same. The glass blows inward and scatters across the floor. 

Mary runs on instinct, jumping off the bed and out of the room. Her nose is bleeding and her head is spinning and she doesn’t expect him to come after her, not really, so when he grabs her by her waist and pulls her back against him it steals all of the breath from her lungs. She gasps and sobs, once and then she just can’t stop. It all comes rushing back up. That life compared to the one she has now; it’s all so disparagingly different. 

“Mary,” he whispers, “I’m so fucking sorry, baby. I didn’t know, I swear to God I didn’t—I didn’t mean it like that. I know you don’t wanna hurt anyone—”

“ _Richard_ —”

“I’m so sorry. Please, I’m so, _so_ sorry.” 

It’s not his fault but she can’t stop crying. Even when she wants to, even when clarity comes, she can’t stop. It’s like her body’s finally caught up with the trauma and her mind can finally acknowledge how absolutely fucked up it all was. 

And he holds her. He keeps talking into her hair and he doesn’t let her fall. Mary grips his wrist and lays her arm over his, holding on right back. 

By the end of it they’re on the floor. She’s in-between his legs, still pulled against his body, and her chest aches like her ribs are sprained from the convulsions. 

She takes a few deep, steadying breaths, eyes wide. He wipes her dampened curls from her face. “Baby...”

“You’re hurt,” she realises, and her voice is raw and ragged when she speaks. She runs her fingers over the cut on his arm. 

“I don’t care,” he says quickly. “I really don’t. Please just look at me.”

Mary does. He cups her face with one hand, drying away the tears on her cheek. “Do you have any idea how strong you are to have lived through all of that? Do you have any clue whatsoever how fucking proud I am of the person you’ve become? Mary, there isn’t a thing about you that I don’t love. Everything you went through led you up to now and it means everything to me that you stayed. I’m not afraid of you. I don’t think you want to hurt a single living thing and all I want in the world is to _help you._ ”

She sucks in a sharp breath. “What if I can’t be helped?”

His face softens. “We’ll figure it out.”

Mary doesn’t know what to say to that. She finds herself crumpling, exhausted, against him. Richard threads his fingers through her hair and kisses her forehead and takes her, without question or hesitation. And it’s so nice to be the one that’s held rather than the one doing all of the holding. 

This is a man who loves her, a man who is going to _stay_. 

* * *

“Peters.”

Mary raises her head to find Fury standing in front of her desk holding a file. “Fury, you son of a bitch.”

“Suspicious activity I want you to monitor for me,” he says, without reacting to her usual greeting. “Some guy named Aldrich Killian is developing… something.”

Mary raises an eyebrow. “You don’t even know what he’s doing?”

“It’s some geneticist stuff.” He waves his hand. “I don’t care. It’s your department, just get on it.”

* * *

“It’s called Extremis—”

Richard holds up a hand. “Pardon?”

“It’s a regenerative prototype technology,” Mary says excitedly. “I’ve been reading all about it and I think—I mean, there are so many flaws from what I can see and Killian’s agenda is just off the charts crazy—but I was going through his travel history and found that last year he travelled to Bern at the same time as—get this—Tony Stark.”

“Tony Stark,” Richard repeats slowly. “As in, _the_ Tony Stark?”

“Yes. They went to the same party and I checked the security footage of the hotel they stayed in—”

“Woah, what? Why would you do that?!”

“Because they spoke! Killian told Stark all about his idea, but what’s more important is Maya Hansen. She and Tony hooked up that night—you can see him entering her room at night and leaving the next morning from the hallway security camera—anyway, the only reason I found that out was because I got really curious when I saw that she was working with Killian. They’re doing this entire project together and I think that Tony might have gotten his hands on some of the research.”

Richard stares. “Do you realise how insane all of this sounds?”

“It’s not insane! Killian is completely unstable but _everyone_ knows that Stark tech is foolproof. If I can hack into his database and extract the information, I’ll have everything I need without batshit Aldrich even knowing!”

Richard frowns. “But why would you want that?”

“To _cure me,_ stupid.”

* * *

Halfway through December, Richard wakes her up in the middle of the night. “Come with me.”

“Mmmm–wha-?”

“As adorable as you are half asleep, I’m serious. I’ve got a surprise for you.”

His surprise, she discovers after letting him drag her out into the cold and into a taxi, is the ice rink in Rockefeller Center. 

“I’ve been meaning to take you all month, but I was waiting for the right time. I heard it’s usually pretty empty at around three in the morning, _so_ ,” he walks her over to a bench and opens the mysterious duffel he’d been carrying to pull out skates, “Wanna show me what you can do?”

“Richard, baby, I love you, but it’s _three in the fucking morning._ ”

He grins. “No time like the present.”

Mary might be tough shit, but Richard happens to be her Achilles heel; or, more specifically, it’s that stupid fucking lopsided smile he always gives her. It makes her chest feel all warm and her mind goes blank and he renders her perfectly incapable of saying no to him. 

So she laces up her skates, far quicker and more expertly than him, and carefully glides out onto the ice. 

And God, it’s like coming home. She hadn’t even realised how much she’d missed it: the bitter cold in the air and the wind stinging her cheeks and the blur of colour as the rest of the world rushes past. 

She starts out getting a feel for it, letting herself build up traction and get comfortable with her skates. She circles the rink backward and forward, and it all comes flooding back: 

The triple salchow—she lands that one a little unsteady with a hard bend at the knee but uses her momentum to keep going; working up to the Litz is a little easier, and then she does a triple axel and a toe loop to finish it off. “The Russians invented that one,” she calls to Richard, who’s standing there watching her like an idiot. 

“Is there nothing you can’t do?”

“What, you didn’t believe me?” Mary grabs his hand and drags him out onto the ice. 

“Wait,” he says, “I don’t know how.”

She throws back her head and laughs. “You mean you dragged me all the way out here just to watch me?”

“Maybe.” Richard shrugs. “Teach me?”

“God, fine. Just keep holding my hands, okay?”

She guides them along, not really doing much at all but rather letting him get a feel for it. “You need to trust your own body,” she says. “Balance. The blades of your skates are what creates traction between you and the ice, so remember to keep the contact flowing between them. And don’t be afraid to cut into the ice. Do you think you can try at least moving around on your own?”

Richard rolls his eyes. “I’m not _inept_.”

She grins and slowly lets go. “Hold onto the wall if you need to,” she advises. 

“What are you doing? Are you leaving me?”

He turns his body when he asks and as a result, he falls. Richard ends up on one knees and Mary laughs as she returns to him. “Are you sure you’re not inept?”

“Actually, I’m right where I wanna be.”

“Oh, _sure_.”

“No, really. How can I propose if I’m standing up?”

His words don’t really register for a good few seconds, and by the time they do he’s already pulled out a little grey box and popped the lid. 

“Richard,” she whispers. “What—?”

“I learned how to skate when I was ten. Granted, I’m not the best at it, but I’m also not _totally_ worthless. I just, uh, had to end up here somehow. Anyway, onto my speech: I met you three years ago and watched you do the bravest thing I’ve ever seen another human being do, and then you just kept showing yourself up and every time I would think to myself that you couldn’t get any stronger, or any more perfect, you’d prove me wrong. I don’t… I don’t know who I am without you, anymore, and I don’t think I ever want to know who that person is ever again. You make me so, so happy, Mary. Can I pretty please be your husband?”

She laughs because she doesn’t know what else to do, and then kneels down right in front of him and kisses that stupid lopsided grin she can’t say no to right off his face. 

“What the fuck do you think, dumbass?”

* * *

“I just think it’s a little soon, don’t you?” May says on the night of Christmas Eve, well after Ben and Richard have passed out on May’s loveseat. They’re lying on top of one another and both snorting. 

May and Mary are half deep into a bottle of red wine. 

“I, uh,” Mary stares down at the ring on her finger. It’s nothing flashy: just a simple gold band with a diamond, exactly the sort of thing she’d probably pick out for herself. “I don’t know. No.”

May raises an eyebrow. “You don’t _know?_ ”

“I don’t wanna talk about it right now.”

“Are you sure? Because I—I mean, it’s a big decision, you know? And of course I’m happy for you both, I just want you to be _sure_ , honey. Richard would understand if you wanted to put it off or something for a while.”

“But I don’t wanna put it off.”

May sighs a little. Then, taking Mary’s hand, she asks, “So when’s the big day?”

* * *

“I don’t think it’s a good idea.”

Mary keeps folding the laundry. “I don’t really care, baby. It’s the best opportunity I have—”

Richard lets out a frustrated noise. “This is _not_ the programme, okay? You can’t just sneak into some charity gala and steal intelligence from Tony Stark! Do you understand how absolutely _fucked_ we would be if it ever got out that it was you?”

“It won’t.”

“You can’t know that!”

“Yes I can,” she says, stepping around the kitchen table. “This is what I was trained for, Richard. It’s all I know how to do.”

“You keep saying shit like that,” he snaps. “God, do you have any idea what bullshit that is?”

“What the hell is _that_ supposed to mean?”

“It means you could do anything else!” He explodes. “You could stick to research with me or—”

“I’m not gonna limit what I do with my life to what _you_ approve of—”

“You could, I don’t know, _not_ risk your livelihood on a chance that he might have the information you’re looking for,” Richard goes on, like he hadn’t even heard her, “I mean, this is my life too! It’s _our_ life!”

“No, no, you’re right,” cheeks hot, she steps closer. “It’s _your_ life, isn’t it? That’s what you’re worried about? Me risking the perfect little picture you’ve made with your equally perfect little girlfriend?”

“Mary—”

“You _wanted this!_ ” She shouts, shoving his chest. “You wanted me to be _normal_ , to be like everyone else! Well I’m trying to find a way to make that happen!”

“I didn’t want it like _this!_ I wanted to do it in a way that was safe—”

“There is no safe way! The things I can do are part of me, do you understand that? For all I know I’m nothing without them!” 

“That’s not true, Mary.”

“That’s _not my name!_ ” She screams, and a vase shatters. He flinches and a bitter laugh erupts from her mouth. “God! You’re afraid of me! You’ll never admit it but we both know it’s true. It’s why you want to strip me of what I can do—”

“I don’t wanna strip you,” he snaps, offended. “I just wanna keep you _safe_.”

“You want to keep me _docile_ ,” she hisses. “Everything that I am, this person that I’ve become, it’s all a result of _your_ wants and _your_ needs—”

“Oh, that is such bullshit! Why the hell do you think we’re living in this house?! How do you think you even got a job with SHIELD?! All I’m doing is keeping us alive, I’m not trying to manipulate you or whatever!”

“Then how come it always goes your way? I have no life outside of you! My entire day revolves around _yours!_ ” 

Another shove. He stumbles back and narrows his eyes dangerously. 

“What is this even about, really? Because it seems like you’re just making a list of excuses to get out of what you really don’t want, which I think might be marrying me.”

They both stop, breathing heavily. Mary wipes the tears from her cheeks. “I never said that.”

“You didn’t really have to.”

She’s never heard that edge in his voice before. It’s hard, like stone, and his face is twisted with anger and hurt. 

“Don’t make this about something it isn’t. Don’t sweep what I’m saying to you under the rug. I’m trying to tell you that I feel like my entire identity has been completely twisted and somewhere along the last year I _lost myself_ and you’re making this about our engagement?”

“How could it not be?”

“Richard,” she snaps, “I don’t know who I am anymore!”

“And I don’t think I ever knew who you were!” He hisses back. “You lie to me, you keep secrets from me—I mean Jesus, you still haven’t told me just where the hell it was that you went last year! You sneak off every Sunday too and I don’t say shit about that, either!”

“That’s _personal!_ ”

“I’m about to be your _husband!_ ”

Another pause. Mary blinks hard so she can see again through the tears. Her gaze drifts down to the ring. She touches it, gently starting to work it loose. 

Richard takes a startled step back. “I am, aren’t I?”

“Richard—”

“ _Don’t_ ,” he says softly, but it’s already off her finger. “For fuck’s sake, Mary—”

“ _Maria_.”

“Oh, come on—”

“I’m not saying it’s forever. I just need time to figure myself out, okay? I think I’ve been… I’ve been lying to myself, too.”

He shakes his head. “This isn’t right. This is so fucked up. I can’t—” he runs a hand through his hair as she sets the ring down on the counter. “What the hell happened? How long have you been thinking all of this?!”

“It was always there,” she says sadly. “I just ignored it. But none of this changes the fact that I love you and I—”

“Stop,” he snaps, holding up a hand. It feels like the end of the world when he lunges for his jacket and grabs his keys. “Just… fucking _stop_. Please.”

“Where are you gonna go?” She demands, following him down the hall.

He jerks the door open. “I don’t fucking know. Ben’s, I guess. Don’t follow me.”

Mary opens her mouth to say something else, and wishes that she could take it all back, that there was some magic spell that could reverse the last ten minutes, but there isn’t.

Love is for children. 

She’s not a child anymore. 

* * *

It’s probably guilt that’s brought her here tonight, standing in a purple silk dress and skirting around a bunch of socialites. She drinks what she can get her hands on because it’s free and because it helps her to forget the fight from two days earlier. 

Richard hasn’t called once. 

Mary hasn’t either. 

But no matter what she tries to tell herself, she knows she was being irrational. She knows it was probably just cold feet and her lashing out and him reacting. Maybe there was some truth to it all, but even so she’d been happy. They’d _both_ been happy until she’d fucked it all up, just like she fucks everything up. 

Her one good thing. Her normal. 

Gone. 

She’s three flutes of champagne deep and doesn’t see an end in sight when Tony Stark himself bumps into her. 

“Oh, Jesus, I’m _so_ sorry—”

She looks down and realises why he’s apologising so profusely; there’s now a gigantic red stain on her dress from the wine he’d been drinking. “Oh,” she says stupidly. “It’s fine, really—”

“Nonsense, this—I mean, this has gotta be expensive,” he’s saying, desperately dabbing at the fabric with a towel that the nearest server had provided (and it is expensive in a way, a late Christmas present from ‘-N’ that had popped up on her doorstep the night before). “I can’t believe myself sometimes, Jesus Christ.”

Mary doesn’t have to be a trained espionage artist to know that Stark is already more wasted than her. “It’s not a big deal,” she promises. “I’ll just go wash up in the kitchen.”

“Are you sure? Because I can pay for that. Who’s it made by? Louis Voutton? Chanel? Saks on fifth?”

“I, uh, don’t know actually,” Mary bunches up the ruined part. “Which way is—?”

“Down the hall and to the left,” he directs. “Are you absolutely positive you’re fine?”

“I promise.” She offers him a small smile and heads off to where he’d pointed, letting her good natured expression fall as soon as she’s out of sight of the party goers. There are a few caterers drinking in the walk-in fridge, but they leave as soon as they see her. 

Mary stumbles over to the sink and turns the water to hot. 

It’s stupid. It’s so, _so_ stupid. Just a dumb dress Nat had probably picked out on a whim and sent from Paris or Germany or something. She’d probably never even been in New York at all and for some reason, that makes it even more valuable. It makes it hurt more to think that they’re being kept apart—whether intentionally or unintentionally—and they can’t even spend the holidays together. They’re family. It’s just not _fair_. 

And what’s even more gaping is the loss of May and Ben. Richard is an entirely different story, but she aches with the absence of her friends. She and May had been planning a New Year’s party together and now they haven’t spoken in days and at this point her best friend probably hates her guts. 

So she’s crying and scrubbing for a good while, and then just crying, curled up on the floor and sobbing into her hands until the doors burst open. 

She has no idea how long it’s been since she ducked away but Tony Stark is significantly more drunk now, looking miserable as he cradles a bottle of scotch to his chest. 

“Hey,” she says, sniffing and wiping her cheeks. 

He starts a little and looks over, eyes narrowing. “ _You_ ,” he says, pointing, “are the girl whose dress I utterly _destroyed_.”

“Yup.”

He stumbles closer. “You’re crying about it, aren’t you? Oh, fuck. Jeez. I’m really sorry. I completely ruined your night, huh?”

“As long as I can have some of that, I’ll consider letting it go.”

He frowns. “How old are you, anyway? Are you a scientist or an engineer or—?”

“I’m a geneticist,” she says. “Kind of. And I’m twenty-four.” 

“Then please, by all means,” he hands the bottle over as he sits down beside her, “be my guest.”

Mary takes a deep, long drink of the scotch—so long of a drink that Stark says, “Woah,” and gently pulls the bottle back. He studies her closely. “You good?”

“Fine.”

“Are you sure?”

She wipes her mouth with the back of her hand. “No.” A sniff. “I don’t know what I’m doing here.”

“Yeah? You and me both.” Stark snorts and takes another sip of scotch. “Supposed to be some fundraiser in honor of my parents. Doesn’t really feel like they’d go for the cause, though.”

“No? Who put it on then? Not you?”

“Nah, that’s Obie’s job.”

“Obie...” Mary thinks back to all of those people mingling in the penthouse living area. “The bald one?”

“That’s him.”

Mary squints at Stark. “You should be careful of him.”

He squints right back as if he doesn’t quite understand the meaning behind her words. Sometimes she forgets that other people haven’t learned to observe the world around them the same way that she has; so Stark, oblivious and drunk, clearly hasn’t noticed the other man schmoozing and dealing, shaking hands with furtive glances, carefully measuring how much alcohol he consumes so as to never be drunk enough to say something he shouldn’t. 

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Just keep an eye on people who never let loose,” she says. “Something I’ve learned.” 

Stark is quick to change tactics and eventually they’re playing ‘I Never’. It’s something she’s only played once before in a bar with Ben, Richard, and May, but the memory is too painful now so she refuses to think about it. 

“Uhhhh, I never slept with a guy.”

They both drink. Mary’s good and tipsy now so she starts giggling. Stark laughs too. “What? College was a wild time.”

“I never went to college,” she says, and watches him take another shot.

He narrows his eyes and gets all up in her face. “If you didn’t go to college, how the hell are you in your field, missy?”

Mary presses her nose to his nose. “I’m self-educated.”

He leans back. “Bullshit! The audacity to lie during a drinking game where honesty is the most _important_ component—”

“I’m _not_ lying!”

“Fine, fine, I’ll let it slide. But I _don’t_ believe you.” He sniffs. “I never learned ballet.”

To her surprise, they both drink. “You danced?” she demands incredulously.

“For—Uh, until I was seven. Then again from eleven to fifteen. Then my dear dead dad shipped me off to MIT and forbade me from doing it anymore.”

Mary frowns. “That’s very sad.”

“Tell me about it.” 

“My dad left me. Three times, actually.”

“Well that was fucking stupid of him.”

“I know, right? I’m such a goddamn _delight_. But he’s so… fucked up in the head. It’s not his fault.”

“Wish I could say the same about my old man,” Stark grouses. “I mean, yes on the fucked up part, but the guy did it to himself. Got so consumed with his work… too uptight. Never knew how to have fun.”

“ _You_ do,” she points out.

He hums, suddenly morose. “Maybe too much.”

“I don’t think that’s a bad thing. I think discipline creates monsters, you know? People need to be able to breathe.”

“And yet I feel like I’m suffocating,” he says, almost like he just can’t stop himself. Mary is suddenly overcome with pity, with the horror of her prior intentions. She’d come here tonight to steal from him, thinking he was probably another shallow millionaire who wouldn’t even notice, but sitting here in front of this wounded animal of a man, she can’t even think about following through with that. 

Tony Stark is a little bit like a drug. He’s so all-consuming, his gravitational force is so large, that the rest of the world ceases to exist in his company. 

Mary kisses him. She doesn’t even think before she does it. All she knows is that they’re both sad and there are wounds that need liking and he smells good. 

He pulls back. “What’s your name?”

“Maria,” she decides, after thinking about it for a second.

Stark nods. His eyes have turned irrevocably sad. “I like that name,” he whispers, and then, “Do you want to get out of here?”

* * *

“Did he ever hit you?”

“Who?”

“Your father.” 

Mary thinks of that night when she’d come to Soldat’s cell and found him pacing the floor like a caged animal. He’d lashed out at her like one, too. 

“Yes.”

“Yeah? Mine too.”

They’re lying on his bed. The sheets are soft and downstairs the party is still going on. She can hear the faint sound of voices and music carrying, bleeding through the floor. Mary turns to look at him. 

He’s crying. 

“Sorry, I—” 

The kiss is long and it’s wet: from the tears staining both of their cheeks that mingle, sadness married, mixing a concoction of the deepest and most heartfelt sorrow. The one after is just the same, but it goes much deeper, and Mary finds that every time their lips touch she feels a little bit less awful.

It’s not the same as kissing Richard. It’s like sitting in the bottom of a swimming pool and instead of trying to save her, Stark is willing to drown with her in solidarity. It’s nice, really, to know that she’s not the only utterly miserable person on the planet. 

“Maria—”

“Shut up,” she whispers, practically begging. “Just… please.”

Stark stares at her for a long moment. He has lovely eyes: dark brown and brimming with concern. He’s not the man they all say he is, that’s plain as day. She’s heard all kinds of stories about how selfish he is; his public defining traits are a complete lack of compassion and an overflowing abundance of arrogance. 

But here he is with a hand against her pulse point, searching for… something. She doesn’t know what. 

“Are you sure?” He asks eventually.

Mary nods. “I’m sure.”

This time they meet in the middle to kiss and it only breaks for a second, just long enough for him to say, “Lights, J,” and then they’re swathed in darkness.

* * *

She wakes up only a few hours later, curled up in his bed with the sheets wrapped around her body. Stark is still out of it, completely oblivious to her presence beside him. 

Mary’s head aches. She rubs her temples and gropes for her clothes. Dressing in the half-light of the morning, she doesn’t bother with her zipper or shoes. 

Quietly she slips out the door and creeps down the hallway, peeking into all of the rooms before she finally comes across what looks like an office. 

Mary glances around to make sure she’s alone and then approaches his computer. 

“Can I help you?”

The voice comes from above. Specifically the ceiling. Mary freezes at the desktop. “And who might you be?”

“I’m JARVIS, Tony Stark’s Artificial Intelligence System. I run this household and all of his other residences and oversee communication between himself and his staff. Did you want me to call a cab for you?”

Mary’s shoulder’s sag. “No, thanks.” 

“If you’re sure.”

She’s not gonna get what she came for. Tough luck, she supposes. It was probably a long shot, anyway. Pinching the bridge of her nose, she grabs a notepad and a pen and writes: 

_you owe me a dress._

_xoxo - maria_

“Tell him he can find me in the phone book under Mary Peters,” she says to Jarvis. 

“Of course. Are you sure about that cab? I could have one downstairs and waiting for you by the time you reach the ground floor.”

Mary sighs and rolls her neck, padding out of the penthouse and toward the elevator. “Fine, yeah, sure.”

* * *

Mary never gets her dress. 

Instead, she gets the heart attack of a lifetime when, two months later, she realises she hasn’t gotten a period for a while.

Which doesn’t make any sense because she’s always regular and yeah, okay, she’s been stressed out and all what with the break-up, but she’s had it worse before. There’s no reason to be so _late_. 

So she runs down to the corner store at the end of the block and picks up what she needs. 

Five minutes later she’s staring at a little pink plus sign. 

“Oh, you have got to be fucking _kidding me!_ ”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hiiii 
> 
> pls lmk what u thought!!
> 
> up next: mary & richard


	4. Chapter 4

  
“May? Can you talk?”

* * *

They sit on the floor of the kitchen cradling steaming mugs of herbal tea. May looks alright, if a little shaken up, but every time she opens her mouth to talk she gulps down the piping hot drink instead. 

“Oh my god, just say something.”

“Does Richard know?”

Mary’s stomach flips like it always does when she thinks of Richard (and the fight, and Richard and the fight, and Richard and the fight and the baby). 

“No.”

May sighs until all that remains in her body is pity: shoulders downcast, brows drawn together, frowning. She sets aside her mug and clasps her hands together. “Well, I really think you should tell him.”

“But I—”

“First, though, you need to figure out what _you_ want.”

May falls silent. What does she want? Her entire life has been consumed by the animal instinct of survival; she’s barely had time to stop and lick her wounds, become domesticated. What the hell does she know about raising a baby? Is there even enough love inside of her for this? 

“Mary?”

“I don’t know if I can do it,” she whispers out loud, horrified, tears prickling her eyes. “I don’t think I want it.”

May scoots closer and wraps her arm around Mary. She’s wearing a grey wool cardigan and she really might be the softest thing Mary’s touched in weeks, not counting Tony Stark’s Egyptian cotton bed sheets. 

And _god_ , that’s the other thing: this kid isn’t even Richard’s. 

Mary doesn’t know why, exactly, she’s refrained from mentioning that part to May. Maybe she’s afraid it’ll piss the other woman off so much she’ll never speak to Mary again, or maybe May will tell Richard before Mary can and then she’ll lose _Rich_ forever, too—or maybe, just maybe, there is a small part of her that wants Richard to believe this baby is his, because maybe then he’ll come back. 

Who is she kidding? Of _course_ he’ll come back, if not for her then for the kid, because he’s an honourable guy and that’s what honourable guys do. 

And it’s not like… it’s not like Stark would believe her, right? He wouldn’t want anything to do with a baby. He’d probably take her to court to get out of paying child support, which she has no interest in getting anyway. 

May gently strokes one of Mary’s curls back and tucks it behind her ear. “You can think about this, you know. You’ve got time. I mean, this is a _huge_ decision you have to make, Mary. There’s no reason to rush things, right?”

“Right,” she agrees faintly. 

“So maybe just take some time to digest things, you know? Then you can ask Richard what he thinks.”

“But what if what he thinks changes the way I think?” Mary blurts, unable to stop herself. “I mean, that’s _why_ we broke up! I felt like I… like my whole identity was defined by his, and I got so lost in what he wanted I forgot that I even got to want things too! I can’t—I can’t do this, oh my god, I’m gonna be sick—”

She barely makes it to the sink. May holds her hair back while she vomits up her breakfast and runs the tap to wash it all down. She fills a glass up with water, too, and says, “Drink that.”

Mary chugs it so fast her chest burns for a second. Then she sinks back down to the floor, puts her head in her hands, and starts to cry.

May holds her. “Mary,” she whispers, “it’s gonna be okay. You have options, alright? And you’re not alone. Richard might be my idiot boyfriend’s idiot brother, but you’re my _best friend._ I’m gonna be right here with you every step of the way.”

“Really?”

May laughs and it sounds like bell chimes. “ _Yes_ , really. I promise.”

Mary feels immeasurably comforted by that. It’s been so fucking hard without Natalia around and she needs a sister now more than ever. 

Mary wipes her cheeks and takes a few deep breaths. “What if I didn’t keep it?”

“I’d still be there for you.”

“But what do you think… what would Richard say? He’d probably hate me, right?”

“I thought you just said you weren’t going to live your life by what Richard wants.”

Her cheeks flush. “But it’s not just my life,” she points out. “It’s… y’know, the lentil too.”

May snorts. “The lentil?”

“You know what I mean. I just… I couldn’t do that to him.”

May hums. “It’s a complicated situation. But if you want my two cents—”

“I always want your two cents.”

She smiles. “I think you’d be a really great mom, Mary. Scratch that, I know it.”

A mom. Mary tries to imagine herself doing the things moms do: cooking meals and packing lunches and putting band-aids on scrapes and all that other shit. Does she really have it in her? 

Right before she can spiral, a thought enters her mind and it’s like Natalia is right there, leaning over her shoulder with her lips twisted into a smirk, warm and real as she whispers, _you are made of marble._

All of the bad thoughts, the fears, the anxiety goes away. Her mind goes completely blank. 

_Do I want this?_

Her hand drifts to her stomach. Warm, not even swollen yet. Her heart skips a beat. 

A decision is made and twenty-two years from now she will face it again, the place this particular path leads: a bright living room, a Sunday morning, six feet of space between them that might as well be an ocean. 

* * *

He’s sitting on the edge of the couch with his hands tucked between his legs, rocking back and forth a little—an old habit from his childhood bleeding into his later years because, in his shock, he feels smaller than he ever has in his entire life.

“Richard?” 

“You’re pregnant?”

Mary swallows. “Yeah.”

“Like… for real?”

“What, do you think you’re being punked or something? _Yes_ , for real.”

“Okay! Okay.” He stands. Runs a hand down his face and then through his hair and stars to pace the length of the living room. Mary watches him carefully, studying all of the emotions that pass over his face. There are enough shades of fear there to paint a portrait with. “Oh my god. Mary, we’re… we’re having a baby?”

And it’s right there on the end of her tongue; she could say it and it would be easy, a simple correction. 

But it would break his heart. 

She can’t do it. She just can’t _say it_. There’s all this hope swelling inside of him and bursting through like the first rays of sunlight after a week-long storm and she can’t take that away again. 

It’s simple. Damning. 

“Yes,” she whispers. “We’re having a baby, Richard.”

She’s crying and he’s crying but it’s not for the same reason. Richard ends up on his knees and between her legs, staring all wondering at her stomach, lips parted in aw. He shakes his head. “Holy shit.”

Mary can’t stop herself from reaching out to push his hair from his eyes. Old habits die hard, or whatever. “I know.”

“Baby, I…”

“Before you say anything else,” she takes a deep breath, “I need you to be honest with me. I need you to tell me if this is what you really want or-or if you wanna do it some other way. Because I love you, and I’m sorry for what I said, but I won’t get back together because of this kid.”

_Liar. Liar. Liar._

It’s a simple manipulation tactic and it makes her nauseous to use it but fuck, what else is she supposed to do here? Ruin his goddamn life? Ruin her own, which is so carefully tethered to and intertwined with his? 

But to her immense relief he says, “No,” and then, “No, Mary, I… you were right, okay? I think I’ve been pushing you for a while and I didn’t even realise it, but if it’s the way that you feel I’m not gonna… I’m not gonna invalidate that, you know? I just got so scared because I thought that things were going okay. Like, I didn’t even know you weren’t happy—”

“Rich,” Mary shakes her head and rests her forehead against his, “Rich, I was so happy. You make me… you make me _so_ fucking happy. A life with you is all that I want, but it’s just… it can’t be all that I have. I’ve spent my entire one running away from things, okay? You asking me to be part of a we is asking me to deconstruct an entire belief system. I grew up being told that nothing was more important than my survival, that nothing could get in the way of my job, and that if it did, I was… weak. Defective. I guess what I’m trying to say is that I’m not… I’m not used to giving parts of myself to someone else. I’m not used to showing my stomach. I’m supposed to be invulnerable.”

He absorbs all of that. Then, “What do you need?”

She stands. “I need to learn how to control my powers, not suppress them. They’re a part of me—maybe the biggest part—and I don’t know _anything_ about them. I have no idea what I can do or why I am the way that I am. I mean, shit, I can speak to dead people, did you know that?”

“ _What?_ ”

“Yeah. I didn’t tell you because it was another one of those things that made me a complete freak—”

“You’re not a freak—”

“Shush! I’m ranting! Anyway, I’ve only done it a couple of times and only with my grandfather, but I can do it. It’s like… it’s like how you know that you can dream. You don’t always remember it and you can’t control it but it’s there, one part in an entire system of things that make up a human being’s psyche. If I stripped myself of it I don’t even know what would be left.”

Richard stares. “Jesus, Mary.”

A beat passes. 

“You forgot Joseph.”

He looks up, startled, and then laughs. Mary does, too, and suddenly all of the cold in the air melts and she forgets to be uncomfortable, to be sorry, to be afraid. 

She sits across from him on the floor. Pats the rug and he scoots a little closer. Their hands touch, and he flips hers to study the lines on her palms. It’s something he’s done a thousand times before, but he does it again with even more scrutiny this time, like the script of her destiny has changed in the time they’ve been apart. 

And fuck, hasn’t it? 

“I’m keeping it,” she whispers, drawing his gaze up. “The baby.”

Richard kisses the back of her palm. “I wouldn’t really expect anything less.”

“What do you mean?”

“I _mean_ ,” he shakes his head, smiling a little, “You’ve always had this gravity, you know? It’s like you pull people into your orbit. You make me feel… you make me feel safe.”

Mary’s breath gets caught in her throat. “Really?”

“Yeah, really. I don’t think I got a good night’s sleep until you were under the same roof as me. And I just… I don’t know. You’re just not like anyone I’ve ever met. I mean, fuck, you stabbed yourself in the stomach the night we met so you didn’t have to kill that little girl.”

Mary snorts. “She reminded me of someone.”

That grabs his attention. “Who?”

“It doesn’t matter—”

“No, but see, it _does_. I don’t wanna push you, Mary, but one of the reasons we stopped working is because you were keeping secrets from me. Hell, you still are. If we have any chance of lasting, I… I just want to know you. _You_ , you, not the person you try to be for me.”

“And I respect that,” she says, “but most of the secrets I have aren’t even my secrets to tell. It wouldn’t be right.”

He stares for a long moment and then his shoulders fall. “Are they dangerous?”

“No,” she says, easily, honestly. “And I wish I could tell you, I really do.”

Richard contemplates that for a minute, brow furrowed as he glares out the window, but he’s still holding her hands and his touch is gentle. Mary watches him, studies the sharp cut of his jawline, the crook of his neck, the little scar by his left eye. She doesn’t bother to stop herself from leaning over to kiss it, and the next thing she knows she’s sitting in his lap. 

“I love you,” she says simply, but she’s feeling it with her whole chest and it’s like the air is charged with it, like her ribs are rattling with it. “I want you, and I want to do this with you, Richard. I can’t—fuck, I don’t think I can do it on my own. I mean, maybe, probably if that’s what you really wanted, but—”

He kisses her. Mary falls into it, falls against him, wraps her arms around his neck and opens her mouth against his own and it’s just so _good._ It’slike getting drunk after a bad day or sinking into hot water. It’s almost unbearable how much she loves him; there’s so much of it and where is it all supposed to go? What is she supposed to do with all of it? 

Richard pulls back a little. “Marry me.”

“I already said I would.”

“Yeah, and then you said no.”

“No, I put a pause on my yes.”

He laughs and there’s so much warmth in his eyes, so much warmth for _her_. No one’s ever looked at her like that. 

“Are you un-pausing?” 

Mary nods. Their noses brush. “I’m un-pausing.”

* * *

Rebecca Barnes squints at her and slowly lowers her yarn. 

“You’re pregnant.”

“How in the fuck did you do that?”

The older woman snorts. “I was a midwife, sweetheart, I know the glow.”

“Glow?” Mary snorts and sets down the vase of flowers she’d brought. “What you call ‘glow’ I call a ridiculous abundance of sweat.”

Rebecca grins. “Well, are you going through with it?”

“I, uh,” she shrugs. “Yeah.”

“Don’t sound _so_ confident, Maria.”

Mary’s shoulders fall. “It’s just a lot. I mean, I want it. The more I think about it the less weird it is and sometimes I’m even excited. But I’m also terrified, you know? I mean what if I screw it up?”

“Oh, God,” Rebecca bemoans, “alright, look at me. Would you beat your child?”

“What? No!”

“Good. Would you starve them or belittle them or neglect them?”

“ _No_.”

“Great, then you’re already far better off than half of the parents in this godforsaken country. Now pass me those five millimeter needles, would you?”

* * *

“‘Fern came slowly down the stairs. Her eyes were red from crying. As she approached her chair, the carton wobbled, and there was a scratching noise. Fern looked at her father—’”

Mary cracks an eye. “What are you reading?”

“Uh, _Charlotte’s Web?_ ”

She props herself up onto an elbow and leans over to scan the page. It’s a children’s book just as she’d suspected. “You know the baby can’t even hear yet, right?”

“Of course, yeah, I just…” he bites his lip. “I got bored. I don’t know.” 

Mary, though still drowsy from her nap, doesn’t need a genius to help her work out how excited he is. It’s only been a week since he’s moved back to their place, but since then he’s bought at least a dozen baby books and he keeps suggesting they go look for cribs and car seats. She hasn’t even had her first _ultrasound_ yet. 

But she has no interest in taking this away from him. Instead, she rests her head on his thigh. “What’s it about?”

“A spider and a pig.”

“I hate spiders.”

“Really? I always liked them.” 

“Well that’s because you’re weird. Keep reading, would you?”

He threads his fingers through her curls. “‘Fern looked at her father. Then she lifted the lid of the carton. There, inside, looking up at her, was the newborn pig. It was a white one. The morning light shone through its ears, turning them pink…’”

* * *

“I heard about your condition.”

Mary is careful not to drop the vial in her hand. She raises her head lazily and squints at Fury. “Who told you?”

“Please,” he snorts, “I have eyes and ears everywhere.”

“Bull, it was Richard.”

“It might’ve been,” he shrugs. “Regardless, I’m here to inform you that you’ll be removed from active duty until such time as you, uh, give birth.”

Mary rolls her eyes. “Is this your cryptic way of saying congratulations?”

“On the contrary. I’ve never been so disappointed in my life.” He sniffs. “I still expect to see you on the mat with the trainees until you lose mobility.”

Mary grins. “Whatever, Nick.”

“Ah! Don’t you _ever_ call me that!”

“Geez, Nick, I didn’t know it bothered you so much—”

“I’m leaving before I break something of value.”

* * *

The gel is cold when it’s applied to her abdomen, just like the technician had warned it would be. Mary doesn’t say anything. She can feel Richard hovering beside her but she can’t bring herself to tear her eyes away from the screen. 

It’s grey, and black, and more grey, until—

“You see that?” The technician, a blonde named Mandy, taps the monitor with a pink-painted nail. “Those are little feet. And that there is the nose, and the belly…” 

Mary sees it. She stares, wide-eyed, at the tiny baby. The technician moves her wand around and suddenly there’s another heartbeat in the room, a steady pounding rhythm. 

“Holy shit,” Richard breathes. 

There’s a baby inside of her: a human being that’s growing and changing every single day that will eventually become a _person_.

“It’s a little early to really determine the sex,” Mandy says, “but given the estimated time of conception—sometime after Christmas, judging from your last cycle—we can probably expect an early September delivery.”

Mary swallows. 

She’s gonna have a kid in less than six months.

* * *

“What if it has my powers?”

Richard’s hand stills. He pulls his toothbrush out of his mouth. “I don’t know. What if it does?”

Mary fiddles with her floss. “I mean, as far as I know my mom didn’t have any, but she died giving birth to me and—holy shit, what if I die? I hadn’t even thought about that—”

“Mary,” Richard wipes his mouth and comes over to her, “you and the baby are gonna be fine, okay? We make advances in technology every single day, which means childbirth is like, miles safer than it used to be. You said you grew up on a farm, right? Do you think your family would have been the sort to be able to afford prenatal vitamins and regular check ups with the doctor?”

She stills. “Probably not.”

“Right. But we can, okay? And the technician said everything looked normal.”

“But what if—what if this sort of thing takes a while to manifest? The powers, I mean.”

“Then… we learn as much as possible, and if it turns out the baby can do what you can, we’ll teach it to control them, too.”

She nods, but it’s hard to be reassured when there’s just so much fucking uncertainty. _She_ can’t even control her powers yet. How the hell is she supposed to teach someone else? God, maybe she was too rash with deciding to keep it. Maybe she should have—

Her eyes catch the little print out of the ultrasound taped to the medicine cabinet door. 

“Yeah,” she whispers. “Okay.”

* * *

One Saturday they drive out to the middle of nowhere. Richard parks the car on the side of the road and leads her out into a field. He then pulls out their supplies: empty beer bottles, rocks, soda cans, and a few other things for her to mess around with.

She’s only tried this once before: back when she’d first come to stay with him and she’d ended up breaking half of his kitchen. 

Which is why she has like, no confidence that she’ll be able to do this.

“Just take your time,” Richard advises, carefully spacing the bottles apart on a tree stump. “It’s okay if it doesn’t work.”

“No it’s not.”

He bites his lip. “Just do your best. I have complete faith in you.”

It should help but it doesn’t. Richard backs away, giving her a pretty wide berth to work with. Mary takes a deep breath and slowly raises her hand. She’s never managed to focus her power before, never managed to channel it from nothing. 

It’s always been brought on by fear, by anger.

She thinks about how fucking terrified she is of this baby, of screwing its life up, of it turning out just like her. She thinks about Fury deliberately keeping Nat away from her—Jesus, what the fuck is his problem, anyway? Does he think the two of them would conspire against him or something? Does he _know_ where she was before HYDRA? 

One of the glass bottles shatters. Mary doesn’t stop. 

HYDRA. HYDRA and James and what they did to the both of them. She can remember the plastic they’d shoved in her mouth and the thousands of volts of electricity running down her spine, frying her nervous system, turning her brain to mush. She remembers them beating her, remembers them whipping him and shocking him and goading him into fights. 

Another bottle shatters. 

She remembers James choking her, and as much as she doesn’t want to admit it, he’d hurt her. She hates it, hates that they turned him into a monster. They’d made him rabid and re-wired his brain to lash out at the slightest offense. She thinks about who he used to be: the man in the letters she’s read, the man who makes Rebecca tear up every Sunday, the one who loved to dance.

The last bottle explodes into a thousand shards. 

Mary stands, triumphant, for one whole second before dropping to her knees. Richard catches her before she can fall all of the way and messily wipes the blood from her nose. 

“Fuck,” he says. “Holy shit, Mary, that was… that was fucking awesome.”

Mary collapses against him. She wraps her arms around his body and holds on for dear life, panting and lightheaded. 

_I’ll get him back. I haven’t forgotten._

_They’re going to pay._

* * *

They get married in city hall.

It’s quiet and quick. Mary really never wanted anything more than that. She hates big shows and grand gestures and as much as she loves Richard, she’s not gonna put on a ridiculous white dress for him and spend thousands of dollars just for a one-day event. 

Besides, the only people they have to invite are May and Ben, who serve as the perfect witnesses. Mary borrows one of May’s dresses: it’s blue and actually comfortable to boot.

“You know,” Mary says to Ben, when they’re waiting for fries at the bowling alley cafe afterward, “Back when we were still thinking of throwing a big she-bang, I was gonna ask you to walk me down the aisle.”

Ben’s head whips around so fast he probably gets whiplash. “Me?”

“Yeah, you. I mean, who else?”

Ben bites his lip. “I, uh… it would have been an honour.”

Mary smiles and sips her soda. “So when are you gonna ask May?”

He visibly short-circuits. “Sorry?”

“I _said_ , when are you gonna ask May to marry you? I mean Jesus, how many years have you guys been together now?”

“Uh, three and a half.”

“Exactly. It’s about time if you ask me.”

“Yeah, no, I know that,” Ben stuffs his hands into his pockets and ducks his head, “I just… I don’t know. I don’t wanna freak her out.”

“Why would you freak her out?”

“It’s just that everyone in her family ended up divorced except her parents, and they probably would have too, if her mom hadn’t died. She’s kind of afraid of the whole institution, I guess. Likes things the way they are. Casual, y’know? Easy peasy.”

Mary stares. “Do you?”

Ben swallows. “I don’t know.”

She bumps their shoulders together. “Yeah you do so. Come on, you can tell me.”

“It’s just that I—I love her, okay? And I feel like… I just want to like, fully and completely commit, but she says you can do that without getting married, which I _get_ , but I-I don’t know. Maybe I’m an asshole for trying to tie down a free spirit.”

“You’re not an asshole,” Mary assures him. “You just need to be patient. I’m sure she’ll come around eventually, and if she doesn’t…”

“If she doesn’t I’ll just do things her way,” he says with a shrug. “She wears the pants in the relationship, not me.”

Mary laughs. “That’s the spirit, Benji.”

The order bell chimes. “ _Number nine!_ ”

* * *

“What do you think for names?”

Richard hums. He’s got his head resting against her chest, right by the ever-expanding pustule of a baby bump that he’s been rambling to for the last half an hour. “I like Daisy.”

“You think it’s gonna be a girl?”

They’d both agreed to wait until it was born to find out and the anticipation is fucking _killing_ her. She wants to say she’d be fine either way, but honestly she’ll probably be a complete disaster no matter what.   
  


“Oh yeah. Call it a premonition.” He leans down a little and kisses her belly. “We could do that crystal-wavy shit if you wanted to, though.”

“Nuh-uh,” Mary shakes her head, smiling. “No cheating.”

“But I wanna _know_ ,” he whines.

“And here I was thinking you already did?”

Richard pouts and falls back against her. Mary threads her fingers through her hair. Sometimes she thinks about it: where she’d be if they hadn’t gotten back together. It would have been a rough five months, that’s for sure.   
  


Maybe it was always supposed to be this way. Maybe they were never meant to be apart and the universe was just giving them the nudge they needed.   
  


“I like Penny,” Mary whispers eventually.   
  


Richard hums. “What about for a boy?”

She’s quiet for a long second, thinking, and then: “Chad.”

Richard scoffs and she laughs. “I seriously hope you’re joking, because that’s just about the ugliest fucking name known to man.”   
  


* * *

“May Reilly’s residence, this is Ben Parker speaking.”

“Ben,” Mary grits into the phone, “is May there?”

“Uh, no, she’s at work. Why? Everything okay?”

“Oh, yeah, it’s totally… totally fine—” something wet splatters onto the floor. “My water just broke, is all.”

There’s a pause, and then: “ _What?_ ”

“You heard me.”

“But it’s too early! You’re only eight months!”

Mary seethes through a contraction. “Don’t you think I know that?” A deep breath. “Listen, I need you to come and get me, okay?”

Ben makes a choking noise. “Hold on a sec, where the hell is Richard?”

Mary scrambles to make up a lie because it’s not like she can _actually_ tell him Richard’s off on a mission. “He’s at some conference or something in New Haven—ow—I wasn’t listening, just—fuck, Jesus, he won’t be back until tomorrow and I’m _not_ taking a taxi when I’m like this and—”

“Okay, okay! I’ll be right there, just hold on.”

* * *

She can barely think. It hurts more than anything ever has before and it’s taking all of her effort to contain the fear, to keep the picture frames on the walls from rattling and the IV bag from bursting and her bed from rising off the floor. 

“Deep breaths,” Ben says for the millionth time, a hand on her back to like, soothe her or something. “Everything is fine.”

“No it’s not,” she says, but it sounds more like a sob and all she can think is that Richard should be here, and underneath that there is the faintest thought that maybe Stark should be, too. _I_ _made a mistake,_ she thinks, _I messed everything up already. This baby is gonna come out looking just like Tony Stark and I’ll be totally fucked._

Ben runs his hand up and down her back and tries to distract her with anecdotes from work. He talks about the pranks the force pulls on their neighboring fire department: coating their drop pole in cooking spray, replacing their sirens with ice cream truck music, spray painting flames on their walls. 

It makes her laugh but she’s also crying and can’t really zero in on why. 

“You can do this,” Ben tells her without an ounce of doubt in his voice. “You’re one of the strongest people I know.”

There’s something about Ben Parker that’s kind of magical: whatever he says, you believe it. There’s so much conviction in his words, so much certainty. Opinions and beliefs become facts, rumours become truth. 

“I can do this,” she echoes. 

He holds her hand through the next contraction. They’re getting closer and closer together and no one can get ahold of Richard. This baby is gonna be born and he won’t be here.   
  


God, this is so typical. Her life is a goddamn disaster. 

May flits in and out, dressed in pink scrubs and smelling of rosewater. She brings Mary ice chips and checks her monitors and dilation and takes notes. “Everything is looking normal,” she assures for probably the thousandth time in four hours. “You’re about seven centimetres along, so we’ll probably take you into the birthing room soon.”

“Oh,” Mary says faintly. “The birthing room. Okay. Cool.”

May laughs. “You’ll be _fine_ , I promise. You’ve got the best OB on staff and, I mean, not to flatter myself, but I’m on your team and I’ve never had a bad delivery.”

“You’ve only been working here for six months,” Ben points out. 

May clocks his arm. “You are _not_ helping!”

“Yes I am! Look, I’m hand holding!” He lifts their joined hands to prove it. “I’m also telling some great jokes, I mean, my best material—the kind of stuff I usually save for the chicks at the bar—”

“Ben Parker!” May screeches, slapping his shoulders. “You’re _pushing_ _it_.”

He laughs and Mary realises she’s forgotten to be terrified. 

* * *

They let her hold him once right after he’s born, when he’s still red and shivering and just as scared out of his mind as she is. 

This whole time Mary’s been focused on the negatives, on what could go wrong; she hadn’t even _thought_ about what it would be like to touch him, or about what he’d sound like when he cried, or how much she would love him. 

It’s almost like a switch being flipped. She gets tunnel vision and suddenly it’s just her and this baby and the rest of the world could be burning or crumbling and it wouldn’t matter. All that matters is him. 

“Holy shit,” Mary whispers. 

“We’re gonna have to take him to the NICU now,” May says, but she’s smiling and hovering close, reaching out to take him. 

Mary doesn’t want to give him up. “Five more seconds,” she barters. 

May waits patiently, and after the five seconds are up Mary knows she’s got no choice but to let him go. He’s too small, his skin is too thin. He’s probably freezing and his lungs aren’t developed enough and who knows, maybe his heart isn’t strong enough or—

“Relax,” May whispers as she takes Mary’s baby, “we’re gonna keep a really close eye on him, I promise. He’ll be hooked up to all kinds of machines so we’ll know immediately if something goes wrong.”

“Right,” Mary says, feeling completely pathetic without him. “When can I—?”

“You have to deliver the placenta and get yourself cleaned up, and then you can come and visit, okay?”

“Yeah,” she nods, “yeah, okay.”

* * *

A little while later, after they give her some pain meds and she’s able to wipe away the sweat and the blood and change into sweats and a weirdly comfortable robe, Mary stands over the little isolette he’s being kept in.

“Hi,” she whispers, reaching inside so she can touch him, so she can make sure he’s real. “Hi, baby. I’m Mommy.”

He squirms a little and his head turns toward the sound of her voice. Mary rests her forehead against the glass. “You’re so tiny. God, I didn’t think… but that’s okay. I’m gonna take really good care of you, alright? I’m gonna make sure you’re safe, I promise. Mommy loves you so much, baby.”

He wiggles closer and his small fingers, grip feeble, close around her thumb. 

* * *

“His name is Peter,” Mary says to Richard later, when he finally rushes into the NICU at four in the morning. 

“It’s a boy?” 

Mary nods. Richard, tentative and wondering, moves to stand opposite her above Peter’s bed. His mouth is parted in awe and his hand slips through to stroke Peter’s stomach. “He’s so small.”

“I know.”

“He’s not—he’s not supposed to be this small—”

“Richard,” Mary says, “he’s gonna be okay.”

“Right.” A nod. He hasn’t even looked away from the baby once, and he touches him like he’s a little blown glass ornament that could break at any second. “God, he looks just like you.”

“Yeah?”

She doesn’t think she’s ever been so proud of anything in her entire life. Richard touches Peter’s cheek and smiles when his tiny mouth twitches. “Fuck, oh my god, he’s the cutest thing on the entire planet. I just wanna like, put him in my pocket and protect him from the entire world.”

Mary laughs. “Me too.”

Richard finally meets her eyes. “You said his name is Peter?”

“Yeah. Peter Benjamin Parker.”

* * *

“Peter _Benjamin?_ ” Ben demands.

“Don’t get a big head over it.”

“Me?! _Never_ ,” Ben says, “I just think it’s interesting that I among the four of us have earned the namesake honour—”

“Ben,” Richard snaps, “I’m gonna push you down the stairs if you don’t shut the fuck up.”

* * *

Once at around three in the morning, maybe a week or so after he’s born, Peter starts crying and just won’t stop.   
  


“What do I do?” Mary asks the nurse that’s been assigned to his case. Her name is Andrea. She talks with a Jersey accent and wears teddy bear covered scrubs.   
  


“They haven’t told you about kangaroo care yet?”

“Pardon?”

Andrea grins with her pink-painted lips. “It’s like a mama kangaroo and her joey,” she says softly, lowering the glass wall that normally keeps Mary from her kid. “You hold him against your skin. Makes him feel safe. Sometimes they forget, see—it’s real lonely being a baby. They need to be touched and talked to.”   
  


Mary follows her instructions uncertainly. Andrea pulls up a chair for Mary to sit in. “They like the warmth,” she tells Mary, grinning triumphantly when Peter’s crying just... stops.   
  


Mary stares at Peter in wonder. She strokes his tiny cheek. “I’m scared I’ll hurt him,” she finds herself confessing to this almost total stranger.   
  


Andrea just laughs. “Babies are a lot stronger than you think, and this one here is something else. They have to learn how to fight before other kids, you know? It’s the first thing preemies do: they decide to keep living. Wouldn’t be surprised if yours goes on to save the whole world, he’s so stubborn.”

Mary grins down at Peter. “Yeah. That’s my little ass-kicker.”

Andrea snorts. “I’ll give you guys a few minutes alone, alright?”

* * *

They’re able to bring him home about two weeks later. 

The first night, Richard has to convince her to sleep in their bed instead of ‘hovering over him like a demon’.

So Mary lays on her back and glares at the ceiling until Richard falls asleep beside her, and once his breathing has evened she slips out of the sheets and creeps down the hall. 

Peter is wide awake when she ducks inside. His big brown eyes blink at her and he sticks his tiny hand through the bars of his crib. 

“Hi,” she says softly, reaching in to pick him up. “I missed you, peanut. Did you miss me?”

They settle on the little chair by the window and Mary just holds him, breathing in his scent and staring down at his tiny, chubby little face. 

“You know if there was an award for cute babies, you’d win first prize.”

Peter says nothing, of course. He just blinks and reaches up to grab her nose. It scrunches up when she smiles. He smiles back and she swears she will _never_ let anything hurt him, she will never leave him, and she will never love anything or anyone more.

* * *

“Well, I’ll be damned.”

Mary sets Peter into Rebecca’s awaiting arms. The older woman stares down at him with wonderment and then grins. “Would you look at that? He’s got the same mouth as you.” 

“I’m sorry I haven’t been able to come by in a while, it’s just that he had to stay at the hospital until he was strong enough, and then we were trying to help him settle in at home—”

“Oh please, no need to explain. But I’d like to know just when it is I’m gonna meet this Richard of yours, hmm?”

Mary’s smile falters a little. “I don’t think that’s such a good idea, Bec.”

“And why not? What, are you embarrassed by me or something?”

“No, it’s just that I can’t exactly explain how I know you, can I? Rich works for SHIELD just like I do, but he’s never really believed me about James. All he sees is the Winter Soldier. Protecting Bucky is more important to me than almost anything else—”

“You think he’d tell,” Rebecca assesses.

Mary’s shoulders fall. “He would think he was helping, but I can’t take that chance. I don’t want HYDRA to have James, but I don’t want SHIELD to have him either. He deserves a chance to just be himself instead of a soldier for once, you know?”

Rebecca hums. “Believe me, I know.”

They both look down at Peter again. He blinks at them. “Can I tell you something awful?” Mary asks, bile burning her throat.

“Nothing is off the table with you and me, sweetheart.”

“Yeah, but this is bad, okay? This is like… the worst thing I’ve ever done.”

Becca leans forward. “Well don’t keep me in suspense.”

“Richard isn’t Peter’s father.”

Rebecca’s eyes widen and her mouth drops right open. She looks from Mary to the baby and back again. “A scandal!” she exclaims, “Oh, who is it? Tell me!”

“I can’t.”

“And he doesn’t know?”

“Of course not,” Mary says. “I can’t ever tell him. It would break his heart, you know? He loves Peter more than anything.”

“But the real father,” Rebecca says, “shouldn’t he have the chance to love him, too?”

And if that isn’t a question for the ages, Mary doesn’t know what is.

* * *

The first year flies by too quickly. Her days and nights revolve almost entirely around Peter, but she doesn’t resent him for it in the slightest. She likes the ridiculous expressions he makes when she shampoos his hair in the bath, and when he sticks his tongue out to taste the soap. He laughs when his rubber ducks squeak (his first word is “Quack!”) and lays on her chest wrapped in a towel afterward, half asleep and smelling like strawberries.   
  


She’s learning, quickly, that where she is steel he’s just soft. Where it’s hard for her to touch and want to be touched, he reaches out first. Mary is a bound and closed book but his pages are open and unwritten. He whines if she doesn’t hold him long enough and buries his face in the crook of her neck when he’s upset. He likes to grab at her fingers and nose and has a habit of sucking Richard’s left thumb. He’s sweet and wide-eyed and laughs more than he ever cries. 

Of course there are hard parts: nights where she doesn’t get any sleep because he won’t stop screaming, but then there are others when he’s out of it from eight to nine the next morning and he screeches with joy at the sight of her. 

Mary sits with him on the floor and watches him play with his blocks, and she always makes sure to kiss both of his cheeks at bedtime because otherwise he never settles. She feeds him, brushes the brown curls that are slowly growing in, changes his diapers. 

On Peter’s first birthday, Richard bakes a little cake just for him. They set it down in front of him on the tray of his high chair and watch him demolish it fistful by fistful. 

Later, when he’s fast asleep in his crib and Mary’s returning to her own bedroom, Richard asks, “Do you feel like I’m not doing enough?”

Startled, Mary looks up. “What do you mean?”

“With Peter,” Richard elaborates. “Because personally I feel like I’m not doing enough. I mean, I’m doing as much as I possibly _can_ , but it sort of feels like every time I go to change a diaper it’s already been changed and every time I go to feed him he’s already been fed, you know? It’s like I never get the chance to…”

“Never get the chance to what?”

“To be a dad.”

Mary bites her tongue and sits across from him on their bed. “I didn’t know you felt that way. I was just trying to make it easier on you, baby. You have work and I’m home all day so I just—”

“No, I know, I don’t have time,” he says, “But I want to _make_ time anyway. He’s my kid and I only get to do this once with him and I-I miss him all the time when I’m gone. I fucking hate that you’re doing all of this by yourself.”

“Okay,” Mary says slowly, “alright, well, what if I went back to work and helped you run things? That way you could stay home with him part of the week and I could stay home for the rest of it.”

He nods slowly. “Yeah, that sounds better.”

Mary leans forward and kisses his forehead. “Hey,” she whispers, “can I try something?”

“Try what?”

“Just stay still and close your eyes.”

She reaches up to hold his face and rests the crown of her head against his own and reaches deep inside of herself to access her power. And then it’s like her rib cage is cracking open and heat rushes to the surface of her skin and there is a throbbing, a deep ache like a fissure in her chest. She thinks about him, about her idiot husband and how much she loves his smile and how if she goes a day without hearing his laugh she feels completely off-key; she tries to conjure up specific images of him: that night on the rooftop when they’d first kissed, or how he’d looked on the ice, down on one knee with snow melting in his hair. Mary pushes it on him, hears his sharp intake of breath, and opens her eyes.

“What… what was that?”

“I’ve been practising with Peter,” she whispers softly. “It’s just what I’m feeling.”

She waits for his reaction, more vulnerable than she’s ever been before, and when he says it, “Maria,” she forgets how to breathe. 

Richard kisses her. He pulls her against him and wraps his arms around her and holds her like letting go would kill him. Mary holds him right back and keeps the current running between them, the warmth of her love. There’s nothing else: just her and him and her bleeding heart. 

* * *

That Christmas, May and Ben come over with a ridiculous amount of gifts for Peter. 

They spend the entire day taking turns in the kitchen; Richard is in charge of the roast, Mary has been baking since dawn, and Ben is making the Parker Family Potatoes. May, much to her consternation, is not allowed within five feet of anything edible. 

After dinner, May is cleaning up the plates when she calls over her shoulder, “Hey Ben, you should probably tell them the thing.”

Ben looks up from the baby in his lap and blinks as if he’d completely forgotten. “Oh, yeah,” he turns to Richard and Mary, “We’re engaged.”

“ _What?!_ ”

“Fucking finally!” Richard pumps the air. “I totally called it, didn’t I? I told you he’d propose around the holidays, I said it and you said, ‘no, that would be cliche’, and then I reminded you that _I_ proposed around the holidays and you got all embarrassed and didn’t talk to me for two hours until you wanted Chinese food—”

“Richard!” Mary explodes, “shut the fuck up!”

Ben is laughing and May is standing there gobsmacked with two bowls in her hands, so Mary gingerly takes them and hugs her. “Congratulations,” she says, and it’s all it takes to pull May out of her stupification.

Her best friend hugs her back and says, “We’re gonna be _sisters_ ,” and it’s one of the best things that Mary has ever heard.

* * *

One night after a long morning at the lab and an even longer afternoon of breaking in SHIELD’s latest trainees, Mary comes back to a quiet house. 

She’s home late so it doesn’t faze her, but it still makes her a little sad. It always does when she thinks about all of the little things she’s not here for. On its own it might not be a big deal to miss Peter’s first finger painting or his first time using a spoon, but all of those firsts start to stack on top of one another. 

Slowly, she strips off her jacket and shoes, ascending the stairs and making sure not to step on the ones that creak. 

That’s around when she hears it: the faint sound of Richard’s voice coming from Peter’s bedroom. 

Mary is quiet as she approaches, creeping toward the open doorway so that she can listen without being seen. “‘Harry felt Dumbledore’s arm twist away from him and re-doubled his grip: the next thing he knew everything went black; he was pressed very hard from all directions; he could not breathe; there were iron bands tightening around his chest; his eyeballs were being forced back into his head; his ear-drums were being pushed deeper into his skull—’”

“Ew!” Peter interrupts. “What’s he doing to him?”

“They’re apparating,” Richard explains softly. 

“What’s that?”

“It’s like… going through a door, only there is no door. Taking yourself from one place to another without actually having to walk there.”

Peter’s eyes are huge. “Can I do that?” he whispers, awed.

Richard laughs and kisses his forehead. “I wish, honey. It’d make everything a whole lot easier, huh? But it’s only for wizards.”

Mary watches Peter hum in mild disappointment before curling up against Richard again, tucking his head under his dad’s chin to listen to the rest of the chapter. She bites her lip. 

Only for wizards… 

“We’ll see about that,” she whispers.

* * *

“Baby, it’s only gonna be for a few days—”

“But I don’t want you to go!”

Peter is almost two when Fury finally comes to her and asks her to pack her shit and fly to Peru for a mission. She’s never been away for longer than a night before and ever since she’d broken the news to Peter, he’s been crying and clinging to her leg. 

Which is precisely what he’s doing right now while she’s in the middle of stuffing her bag with clothes. He has tears on his face and his cheeks are all red and puffy and she’s _never_ seen him so devastated. 

“Honey,” she kneels down and pries him loose, before wiping his face dry, “Daddy will be here with you, okay? And he’s got all kinds of fun things planned—”

“But I’ll miss you,” Peter sobs. “I want you to _stay_.”

Mary sighs. “I’m sorry, baby. I would stay if I could but I have to go—”

“ _No!_ ” Peter screams. Then he rips himself out of her arms and runs out of her bedroom, headed for his own down the hall. Mary hears the door slam and winces. 

She runs a hand through her hair. “Fuck.” 

It’s hard enough for her to leave him just to go to work. Mary takes a minute to just breathe before starting after him. She raps lightly on the door to his room, heart twisting at the sound of his muffled crying. “Peter?” 

When she slips inside he buries his head under his pillow. Mary perches on his bed and puts her hand on his back. She leans over him. “Baby, Mommy loves you.” 

“Well I _don’t_ love Mommy!” 

Mary’s been through some serious shit: she’s been tortured and brainwashed and she’s lost most of the people she’s ever cared about—but that? It hurts more than anything ever has before. 

“You don’t mean that, do you?”

She doesn’t mean to sound so vulnerable, and deep down she knows he doesn’t, that he’s just lashing out because he’s upset.   
  


But it’s still painful.   
  


“Peter—”

“Just _go_ ,” Peter sobs. 

Mary purses her lips, eyes burning. Then she leans down and presses a lingering kiss to his temple anyway because she _needs_ him to know that she’s sorry, that she loves him, that she’ll miss him.

“I’ll come back, I promise.”

* * *

She’s gone for a little longer than she’d expected to be and every day that the mission drags out, she gets more and more restless. 

Finally they catch the guy after a high speed car chase and a fist fight on a rooftop. Mary gets to go home, battered and bruised and utterly exhausted. 

She pauses on the doorstep, keys in hand. Everything aches and her heart is pounding because what if Peter’s still upset? What is she supposed to say to him? 

  
She’s still agonising over it when she stumbles into the house. Mary almost trips while kicking off her boots.

“Mommy!”

Peter barrels into her before she can even attempt to catch him. Mary sucks in a sharp breath, trying her hardest not to hiss in pain or worse: start crying. She picks Peter up and holds him to her chest. “Hi, baby.”

“I missed you!” He plants a kiss on her cheek, beaming like nothing ever happened at all. 

Mary finds herself laughing with sheer relief. “I missed you, too.”

He wraps his arms around her neck and buries his face in the crook of it, but his attention span is short and so it doesn’t last as long as she’d like. Peter pulls back, looking a little uncertain now. “I’m sorry I yelled at you.”

Mary shakes her head. “That’s okay, baby. I’m not mad.”

“You promise?” His eyes are big and brown and earnest. “I could kiss it better,” he offers, before doing just that: pressing his lips to her nose and chin and really anywhere he can reach.

“Peter,” she laughs, because she swears to God he’s part dog or something, “it’s okay, I promise. So where’s daddy? What did you two do together while I was gone?”

* * *

Ben and May get married at Montauk in the early spring. They rent a couple of little cabins on the beach to stay in and hold the ceremony just a little ways down the shore. 

When it’s over, Ben sweeps May up into his arms and carries her all the way up to the front door of their place. Richard shakes hands with the priest that had driven down to oversee the ceremony and offers to drive him back to the city. The older man waves him off and says he has fare for a taxi.

That leaves them alone with Peter.

Mary takes his hand and walks him out toward the ocean. Richard catches on to her idea and grabs Peter’s other hand, and they lift him together with every wave, barely letting the water graze him. Peter laughs with pure delight. 

“Ben and I used to come here a lot with our mom,” Richard says to her later, when Peter is playing with the sand and they’re sitting in it like little kids, watching the seagulls glide against the grey afternoon sky. “I’ve always wanted to live out here.”

“Thinking about retirement already, Parker?”

“No,” he says bashfully. “Well yeah, kind of. I just think it would be nice is all.”

Mary hums and leans back onto her elbows. “This is the first time I’ve ever been to the beach.” 

“Really?”

“Well it’s not like they had KGB approved field trips,” she quips. “Actually, that’s not true. They had to let us drive around the property so that we could learn. But before seventeen that was all I knew; acres and acres of land, all covered in snow for more than half the year. Sometimes we’d play in it.”

Richard raises an eyebrow. “Doesn’t sound so bad.”

“It wasn’t, until they caught us at it and shot a girl in the head to teach us a lesson.”

His face twists. “Jesus.”

“Sorry, I don’t mean to… it was just all I knew. It was normal for me like this was normal for you. A girl steals a bread roll at dinner, she gets shot in the head. A girl is caught out of her cuffs at night, she gets shot in the head—”

“Wait, out of her cuffs?”

Mary blinks. “Did I never tell you that? They cuffed us to the beds at night when we were little.”

“ _What?_ ”

“Yes. And when we were old enough, they gave us our own rooms and locked us in all night. There were bars on all of the windows and guards patrolling the halls.”

Richard is open-mouthed, but abruptly it snaps shut. His jaw locks and he looks away, down into his lap. “I never really thought about it. I don’t know why, maybe I just didn’t want to picture you going through all that, or I never imagined it could be that bad…” he shakes his head. “I just have such a hard time reconciling you with the person you must’ve been. Shit, even the person you used to be when we first met.”

“What do you mean?” 

He shrugs and turns to look at her, smiling all soft and sad. “You’re so much better than I think you could ever realise. Sometimes I look at you and it hits me—how strong you are, I mean. Creating a life for yourself after the way you were raised and the people you came from. Being his mom,” he jerks his head toward Peter, who is happily patting at his shapeless mound of sand, “you’re just so damn good at it. Fuck, I don’t even know what I’m saying anymore—”

Mary kisses him. It kind of feels like forever since she has, and suddenly she doesn’t wanna stop, but—

“Mommy! Look! I made a snowman!”

* * *

That summer, Peter starts having nightmares. 

The first time she’s ripped from sleep by his terrified screaming, Mary’s first assumption is that her past has finally caught up to her, that HYDRA’s found them out and they’re gonna hurt him to hurt her, or worse: steal him in the night and train him up to be a good little soldier.

She thinks about that shit every day, agonises over it while she’s doing the laundry or kicking some recruit’s ass or testing samples. It’s what she’s thinking about when she’s racing down the hall to his room at three in the morning with a gun in her hand, only to find his room empty, his window locked, and nothing out of place. 

Mary quickly sets her glock aside and kneels down by his bed, wiping the tears from his face. He’s still crying so more keep coming, but he seems soothed by her touch. Mary brushes his sweat soaked curls from his eyes. “What’s wrong, baby?”

He sniffles and grips at her shirt. “I don’t know.”

He sounds so helpless and small and it’s right about then that she realises he’s wet the bed. And that’s fine, it’s okay, he’s still learning to make it through the night anyway. Gently she peels the blankets back. “Everything is okay,” she promises, “how about a bath? Would that make you feel better?”

He nods and lets her lead him to the bathroom. Mary runs the water to warm and starts to full up the tub with bubbles. 

Peter starts to cry harder for some reason. Mary kneels down in front of him. “Petey? Hey, what’s wrong?”

“I want _daddy_ ,” he sobs. 

“Oh,” Mary says stupidly, and then, “He’ll be home soon, okay? Just a couple more days.”

She misses him too, and it’s been exhausting this last week without him. Peter is finally old enough to start running through the house and getting into cupboards and he keeps doing this thing—this puppy-dog eyed expression that, were it not for her years of emotional discipline, she would absolutely cave to every time. 

And now (God, especially now) it’d be nice to have help. 

Peter lets her put him in the bath. He won’t stop crying and at this point she thinks he’s probably just tired and scared and ashamed. It’s only when she starts gently washing out his hair that he calms down. 

Mary rinses the soap away and then, unable to stop herself, wraps her arms around him and holds him as close as she can through the barrier of porcelain. “Mommy loves you,” she whispers. “Mommy loves you so much and everything is gonna be just fine, okay baby?”

Peter sniffs. “Okay.”

She kisses the top of his head. “Do you wanna get out?”

He hums and she knows that means he wants to stay, so she waits until the water gets tepid and his fingers wrinkle; Mary strokes his hair back and watches him cup handfuls of water over and over, slowly letting it trickle out through the cracks. 

“Who’s the man in my dreams?”

May rests her cheek against the edge of the tub, one hand outstretched to touch his neck. “What do you mean? What does he look like?” 

Peter shrugs. “I don’t know. Can’t really see him.” 

“Does he say anything to you?”

“He just says ‘I love you’,” Peter tells her. “And he tries to hold me but then he’s just gone.”

Mary feels cold. “Do you remember anything else?”

“No. Just that I get really sad and scared when he leaves.”

She studies him for a minute but he doesn’t seem all that concerned, only a little curious. _It’s just a dream,_ she tells herself, and shakes it off. “Come on, let’s go back to bed.”

Peter pouts and does the kicked puppy face again. “Five more minutes?”

Mary kisses his cheek just because of how cute he looks. “Do you want to turn into a prune?”

He slumps. “No.”

So Mary helps him out and wraps him up in a towel, one of the ones May had bought with the teddy bear ears. Once she gets a fresh pull-up on him, she picks him up and carries him to her bedroom.

Peter tries to cling to her when she sets him down on her mattress and starts to pull away. “Where you goin’?”

“I’m just gonna change your sheets really quick, okay? I’ll be back in a second.”

She kisses his forehead and does just that: stripping his bed of its Toy Story themed covers, spraying down the mattress, throwing all of his bedding in the wash. 

_Who’s the man in my dreams?_

Mary slams the lid on the washer closed. She covers her mouth with a shaking hand, thinking hard.

  
When she gets back to her room, she finds Peter curled up and fast asleep already.

* * *

The nightmares don’t stop. If anything they only get worse and suddenly it’s like having a newborn all over again: she and Richard take shifts to comfort him and try to put him back to sleep. 

Some nights though, Peter wakes up quietly. He comes to _them_ instead, creeping down the hall and poking his head in the doorway. 

“I smell a Peanut Butter Pants,” Mary will drawl, half asleep, and he’ll come running up, clambering onto the bed to curl up between them.   
  


Those nights aren’t so bad. He’s contented to be in his arms and she feels better holding him. 

Other nights aren’t so easy. Sometimes he demands Mary, sometimes he screams for his dad. 

Richard is good about it. He reads to Peter and holds him, rocks him in his arms and makes up stories for him. One time he comes into their room after two hours of comforting Peter back to sleep, feet dragging, eyes drooping.

“He out?”

A nod. 

“What did you do?”

“I taught him everything I know about the basics of genetics.”

Mary laughs. “So you bored him to sleep?”

“Oh, no,” Richard faceplants into his pillow. “He was riveted.”

* * *

“Peter?”

“Yeah?”

He’s on his stomach colouring in the living room. Mary’s been running her hands through his hair for a few minutes now and she can see him starting to get drowsy. He exhausted but too afraid to sleep. 

“Do you still see the man when you dream?”

“Sometimes,” he mutters. “Sometimes no.”

“Do you see anyone else?”

“A woman,” he says. “She’s old and she always cries.” 

“Did she ever tell you her name?”

A shrug. “She said it was the same as yours, but that doesn’t make any sense because only you’re called Mommy.”

Mary hums. Internally though, her heart has dropped into her stomach and her blood is curdling at the thought of what she’s about to do. She keeps stroking his hair back until he finally falls asleep.

Where he goes, she goes with him.

* * *

“Deda.”

Her grandfather’s eyes widen when he sees her. Mary doesn’t know what to think. It’s been _years_ since he’s reached out to her in a dream. She’d thought he might’ve finally moved on. 

“Maria,” he replies, voice rasping. “What are you doing here?”

“What are _you_ doing here?” She demands in return. “What are you doing inside my son’s head?”

Deda heaves a heavy, sorrowful sigh. “I just wanted to meet him is all.”

Mary bites her tongue. Then she kneels down beside him in the hay, for it is the barn, it is always the barn where she sees him. “You’re scaring him,” she whispers, wrapping her hand around his frail forearm. When she had been small he’d been so big to her, larger than life and terrifying. Now she realises how small he really was, how sickly. 

“He… it’s so hard, Maria, to drift like this. When I saw the light for the first time in so long… I thought it was you. But it was the boy. It was _Petya_. He looks so much like you.”

Then he starts to cry: heavy, back-breaking sobs. Maria holds him and shushes him. “It’s okay,” she says. “I’m sorry you’re lonely. I’ll visit more often, I promise, but you have to leave him alone. You can’t _ever_ speak to him again, understood?”

Deda wipes his cheeks. “He is a good boy,” her grandfather whispers, and then his eyes meet her own and her breath catches at the crazed look in them. “The fate of the universe depends upon him. You must keep him safe—”

The dream ends, but Maria is jerked sideways into another. This time she finds herself in an unfamiliar place: the living room of a lavish home. An older woman is perched on a white loveseat sipping a dry martini. 

“Hello,” she says, not unkind. 

“Hi,” Mary returns, still shaken and confused. “Who the hell are you?”

“I’m Maria,” she says. “And you are, too.”

Mary slowly moves to sit down. “You’ve been visiting my son, too. How?”

A shrug. “Some spirits never rest. We drift, waiting for peace that never comes, or for loved ones. Me, I’m waiting on my little _Antonio_. And when he comes, I expect I will be waiting on your Peter, too.”

“You’re Stark’s mother.”

A small smile rugs at the woman’s lips. “Why else would we be sitting here right now if I wasn’t connected to him somehow?” 

“Well I want you to stop,” Mary says firmly. “He can’t sleep, okay? He doesn’t understand what this is and you’re scaring him.”

The older woman sighs. “I know. I just… I’d never been able to… we can hear the living sometimes, you know. Not always, just… sometimes. But they never hear us back. Not ever. Not until Peter and you.”

Maria rakes a hand through her hair. “I didn’t know he was like me.”

“I don’t think he is,” Maria Stark says. “At least, not… fully. His light is nowhere near as bright as yours.”

Mary doesn’t know what the hell to make of that, or of any of this for that matter. Electing not to dwell on it, she stands. “Just leave him alone please?”

The older woman ducks her head. “I will, if you do something for me.”

“And what would that be?”

“Tell my son,” Maria says firmly. “He has a right to know.” 

The dream ends. Mary wakes up with a gasp and finds Peter fast asleep in her lap, looking more peaceful than he has in weeks. 

“Shit,” she whispers.

* * *

One Sunday, Rebecca has a stroke.

Mary doesn’t see it coming. It happens in the middle of their weekly visit and the next thing she knows, she’s sitting by the older woman’s bed holding her hand and trying her very hardest not to cry.

It’s night. Rebecca’s bedside lamp casts a warm glow over the room. Her chest rises and falls but her eyes haven’t opened yet. Mary takes consolation in the steady beeping of the monitors and the way, every so often, her bony fingers will twitch. 

She’d called Richard about an hour ago and told him she was gonna be staying overnight at headquarters. He hadn’t really pressed and there is a tiny, stupid part of her that resents him for it. She wants to know, hadn’t he heard the shaking of her voice beneath her falsely bright tone? Hadn’t he sensed something was off? 

But he’s not trained like her. He didn’t grow up learning to be suspicious like her, to second guess the way that she does. 

“You look upset,” croaks a faint voice. “What’s got you all twisted up inside, Maria?”

Mary sobs. She can’t remember the last time she felt so relieved. Rebecca starts to say something else and then coughs, so Mary quickly sobers to help her. 

The nurse comes in and does a quick check up. “Your vitals look okay all things considered, but I want you to _rest_. No sitting up, no yelling, no stress. In fact it’s best that you sleep as soon as possible.”

After running through a list of things to do and not do from now on, the nurse exits to fetch the doctor. 

Rebecca harrumphs as soon as she’s gone. “What a bunch of horseshit. So why were you crying?”

Mary lets out a wet laugh. “I was worried about you.”

“Who, me? Like there’s anything to worry about.”

“But you—”

“Look at me,” Rebecca says firmly, “I am _not_ ready to go yet. You’re not losing me any time soon.”

Mary sucks in a sharp breath and nods. “I was just scared.”

“I know.”

“Bec… I just wanted to thank you. I don’t know where I would be—”

“Listen to me: you are the reason I get up in the morning and go through the painstaking task of putting in makeup every Sunday. _You_ have given me an incredible gift: _hope_. Without you I don’t know where I’d be. So you can stop that ridiculousness this instant and read me the Digest until I fall asleep. I don’t wanna be conscious when that doctor comes in and starts feeling me up.”

* * *

The months pass like quicksand. Mary feels a little like she’s drifting from minute to minute, barely perceiving the time. There are only moments: climbing onto the roof to find Richard with Peter in his lap, telling him about all of the constellations and the stories behind them; building a fort in Peter’s room and falling asleep on his bedroom floor, only to wake up in the middle of the night to find that he’d crawled off his bed so he can sleep beside her; missions and training sessions and visits with Rebecca, who has grown increasingly frail and needs Mary’s help just to walk to the bathroom these days. 

Everything is blending together. She feels like she’s losing her grip on reality, until—

“Hey stranger.”

The redhead at the bar looks up with wide eyes. Slowly she lowers the glass of scotch in hand and puts on a smirk. “Long time no see. What the hell are you doing all the way out here?”

“Who, me? I’m a local. Brandy Maxwell, bred and born in Tennessee.”

Natalia laughs. She gestures to the stool on her right, so Mary sits. 

“Mission?”

“Just some intel Fury needed,” Mary says, thinking of the flash drive in her back pocket. “What about you?”

“I’m undercover,” Nat says, “but my partner is working for me tonight because this place is miserable, I hate it, and I wanted to get drunk.”

Mary’s chest feels tight. “How long have you been out here?”

“A few months. It might drag on a little longer, but that’s the job, right?”

Mary’s mouth twists. “Right.”

She orders a whiskey. Nat gets her scotch topped off. They are surrounded by a cacophony of yelling and laughing, but between them there is a stilted silence. Mary breaks it by turning to look at her sister. Their eyes meet and it doesn’t take a Black Widow to see how tired Nat is: there are dark circles beneath her eyes and her face is pale and drawn. 

“You look like shit, baby sister.”

Nat’s lip twitches upward but it’s more like a reflex. “Feel like it, too.”

“Must be a big job if it’s had you out here that long.”

“You know I’m not allowed to talk about it,” Nat reminds her bitterly. “But yeah, this guy’s a big target. I’m just waiting for the all-clear to escort him north.” 

“And here I thought you made your own rules.” 

“Maybe, but I’m terrified of stepping out of line,” Nat says. “I’ve spent the last four years trying to earn my place and I’m not about to fuck it up because I’m sick of a little humidity. Or because I miss my sister.”

Mary knocks back her drink and signals for another. She runs her finger along the rim of her glass. The rest of the world has faded away: all that’s left is amber liquid slowly melting ice, and the smell of Nat’s shampoo, and the chasm that’s formed between the two of them. She hates SHIELD for it, hates Fury for it specifically. 

“You should probably get going,” Nat whispers, voice rough. 

Mary’s heart rents. “Nat…”

“Really.” Her sister forces a smile. “I’ll be fine.”

But she won’t be. She’s living up to impossible standards, constantly trying to prove that she’s not the bad guy. Mary knows how hard it is because she struggles with the same bullshit every day, and sometimes a terrifying thought will enter her mind: that it would probably be so much easier to just give in to the dark. 

She stands. Drops a twenty onto the bar and studies her sister. “Nat,” she says, and takes a deep breath, “you’re not thinking of—?”

“No,” her sister says quickly. “Never.”

“Good, because I can tell you one thing: no matter what side you’re on, they’ll bleed you dry until there’s nothing left.” She pauses. “We were forced into this life, you and me. But we still get to choose what we make of it. Maybe instead of trying to be perfect all of the time just… be you. While there’s still some of you left.”

Nat’s gaze falters. She swallows hard. “When will I see you again?”

Mary leans down and presses a kiss to the crown of her head. “Don’t worry,” she whispers. “I’ll find you, I promise.”

* * *

Mary knows what it means when she arrives at the nursing home and finds an empty bed. 

Panic seizes her anyway and she ducks out of the room she’s become so familiar with, now bare of all belongings. Mary grabs the nearest orderly by the wrist. “Where is she? Rebecca?”

The orderly’s expression shifts from startled to pitying. “She suffered a stroke yesterday and passed last night in her sleep,” the woman says softly. “I’m so sorry.” 

* * *

When Mary walks into the house she’s still crying: silent tears that have been freezing to her cheeks when she doesn’t wipe them away quick enough.

She doesn’t know how the hell to stop them. 

_Rebecca_ , she thinks. Rebecca who had been her family, who had believed in her, who had died without ever getting to see James again. 

_I wasn’t fast enough. I’m so fucking sorry._

Shaking, Mary scrubs her cheeks dry again and unwinds her scarf. “Momma?” she hears, and opens her eyes to see Peter leaning around the corner. 

“Hi baby,” she says, sniffing and forcing a smile. 

It doesn’t work. “Why’re you crying?”

Mary shakes her head. “I’m not,” she lies. “I’m okay now.”

She picks him up and Peter wraps his arms around her neck, studying her closely. He puts a hand on her cheek, leans forward, and presses their noses together. “Promise?”

“I promise.”

Peter seems to accept that, but he stays close to her for the rest of the day, curled in her lap like a little puppy and distracting her with all of the latest stuffed animal gossip. For a while she forgets to be sad. 

* * *

A few weeks after Peter’s third birthday, Mary takes him to a dance studio.

It’s a clean place with polished wooden floors and white walls. There’s a wide-open lobby with a receptionist’s desk and from what Mary can see, a good six separate rooms for practising in. 

“Hi,” she says to the teenaged girl behind the desk, “I’m here to—”

“Hi,” Peter pipes up, standing on his tip-toes to wave at the girl. 

She grins at his ill-timed interruption. “Hi there, I’m Amy.”

“I’m Peter,” he says. “You’re pretty.”

Amy laughs. “Thank you, Peter.” She returns her attention to Mary. “Did you have an appointment?”

* * *

Mary gets him set up in the easiest class there is: a group of about a dozen toddlers taught by Amy herself. Their main goal is to help the kids learn basic balance and coordination. “An early start helps them become more disciplined dancers later on,” she calls over her shoulder during their tour of the studio. 

They watch an intermediate class for a few minutes. Mary studies them as they pirouette. 

“That girl on the left,” she says to Amy, “Her form is all wrong.”

“Are you a dancer, too?”

She meets a pair of keen grey eyes and jerks her chin in affirmation. “Used to be.”

The eyes narrow. “You wouldn’t be interested in teaching, would you? One of our instructors just transferred locations and the rest of the ladies have been scrambling to cover her classes. I’m sure they’d be happy to interview you.”

Mary bites her lip. She looks down at Peter, who can always sense when her gaze is on him. He stares right back and smiles all goofy. 

“My Sunday morning availability just opened up if that works.”

* * *

She stands in the middle of the clearing where Richard brought her that day. There’s still shards of broken glass from the bottles she broke. 

Mary closes her eyes. 

When she opens them, she’s home.

* * *

They sit in the stands while Peter practises out on the field, wearing a too-big baseball helmet and drowning his fourth birthday present from Ben: a jersey with PARKER embroidered on the back. So far he hasn’t hit the ball once, but he waves after every try and laughs when he misses like it’s the funniest thing on the planet. 

“Ben, that’s the fifth time you’ve looked at me in two minutes. What’s up?”

Ben heaves a sigh. He’s all hunched over, the gentlest guy in that big, burly body. “You’ve been… off for a few weeks,” he says. “I noticed, May noticed—hell, even _Richard_ noticed, and he’s probably the most oblivious guy in the whole world.”

Mary bites her lip. “I’m fine, it’s just… work is tough.”

“Really? Because you seem more sad than stressed.” When she doesn’t reply right away, he scoots a little closer. “Look, I don’t wanna push you, okay? I’m not a pusher. If you don’t wanna talk about your shit with me, that’s fine. But I want you to know that I’m here for you. And if you _do_ decide to talk, I’ll listen.”

Mary opens her mouth to speak. Closes it. “Thank you,” she says eventually.

Ben shrugs. Then he squints out across the field and studies the skyline of the city. “Fuck, okay, I’m about to get pushy.”

“Ben—”

“Richard works for the CIA, doesn’t he?”

Whatever the hell Mary had been expecting, it hadn’t been that. “I—what?”

“Or is it the FBI?” He goes on. “The NSA?”

“Benji…” Mary shakes her head. “Where did you come up with this?”

“I’m not an idiot, Mary. Whatever it is, I know you’re involved, too. Now, I’m not gonna press you for details, but I get the idea that whatever the fuck you’re both doing is dangerous, which means your lives are constantly at risk, which means that kid,” he points to Peter, “could lose both his parents in one stroke, and then what happens?”

Mary swallows. She feels lightheaded and takes a second to chug some of her water. “He goes to you and May.”

“Is that in a will somewhere?”

“I—we haven’t really gotten around to that, yet—”

“Well you should. And while you’re at it, you should probably write it down somewhere. The truth about Peter, I mean.”

Mary slowly lowers her bottle. Blood cold, stomach twisting, she asks, “What are you talking about?”

“Richard Parker is the most oblivious guy in the world,” Ben says sadly. “And he’s also not Peter’s father, is he?”

It’s phrased like a question but it’s more like a statement, because that’s just Ben Parker’s way. Belief becomes fact, fantasy becomes reality. Mary finds herself completely shutting down; her organs turn to lead, her bones turn to steel, her heart forgets to beat. Her voice is flat when she asks, “And where did you get that idea?”

It surprises Ben. He doesn’t know about all of her bad, about the thorns under the carefully kept roses she presents for him and May. 

“Mary… he doesn’t look anything like Richard at all.”

“So? Maybe I have strong genes.”

“Maybe you do, but that doesn’t explain the disconnect between him and Peter.”

“Richard _loves_ Peter.”

“Of course he does, and I’m not suggesting otherwise. I’m just saying there’s like this… barrier. It’s like they both know it deep down somewhere, like they can never really… get there. They can’t bond properly. I look at them and sometimes it’s like puzzle pieces trying to connect when they just don’t fit. Fuck, I don’t know.”

Mary rips her gaze away. There are tears in her eyes. “How long have you known?”

“I’ve only suspected.”

“ _How long?_ ”

“A year or so, I guess.”

“Have you told anyone else what you think? May? Rich?”

Ben shakes his head. “No.”

“ _Will_ you?”

“That’s not my place or my style,” Ben says firmly. “And if it’s any consolation, I don’t think either of them suspect a thing.”

Mary shoots to her feet, scratching the back of her head in agitation. “What the fuck, Ben.”

“I didn’t mean to spring it on you like this—”

“ _Bullshit_ ,” she snaps, body burning. “You drove me out here to the middle of fucking nowhere and dropped this shit into my lap and you expect me to believe it wasn’t pre-meditated? _Fuck you._ ”

He winces. “Mary…”

“What? What the hell do you have to say for yourself? Or would you rather lecture me? Maybe that was your goal, huh? You wanna talk to me about how I have a responsibility to break my husband’s heart by telling him the truth?”

“I never said that,” Ben tells her, surprisingly soft. “And personally, I don’t think you should tell him either.”

That takes her by surprise. “You don’t?”

“It would ruin him.”

She holds his gaze for a moment and then slowly sinks back down onto the metal bench. “Fuck.”

They’re both silent for a minute. Then Ben asks, “So who’s his real dad?”

For some reason the question makes Mary laugh, but it’s bitter in flavour and carries a hard edge. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

“Yeah? Try me.”

She bites her tongue, thinking. Then she takes a deep breath. “Tony Stark.”

Ben’s eyes widen. “Are you fucking serious? How the hell did you score that?! I mean—Jesus, Peters, what the fuck?”

Mary shrugs. “We were drunk. It was New Year’s.”

“Fuck.”

“I know.”

Ben stares at Peter wonderingly. “Oh my god, I think I see it.”

“It’s the eyes,” Mary says. “They have the exact same fucking eyes.”

“ _Shit_.” 

Right then, Peter swings out with his bat and finally hits the ball. He turns to them. “I did it! Did you see?!”

“Good job, baby!” Ben calls. 

* * *

Two days later Mary goes to Ben and May’s. 

Ben is home alone just like she’d planned, but Mary stays on the doorstep and holds out an envelope. “Would you hold onto this for me in case something happens?”

Ben takes it hesitantly. “I… yeah. I will.”

“Thank you, Ben.”

He nods slowly, still staring down at the words: _For Peter - do not open before the age of 18._

* * *

A week before Christmas, they go ice skating together: her and Richard and Peter, who is too scared to let go of them.

  
They don’t mind. Neither of them have any plans to let go.

Eventually he falls though, but instead of crying he laughs and tilts his head back, sticking his tongue out to taste the softly falling snow.   
  


Mary kneels in front of him. “Are you hurt?”

Peter shakes his head. He’s smiling. “Just happy.”

Mary smiles back and strokes his hair. “I’m happy too.” 

* * *

“We have a tip.”

Mary’s blood freezes. She knows without knowing. Her hand comes up to grip the doorway when she asks, “On what?”

“On _who_ ,” Fury corrects, voice grave over the phone. “On the Winter Soldier, that’s who.”

She almost throws up. “Why are you calling me?”

“Because you’re one of my best agents,” Fury says. “Because I need this bastard taken down. Why the hell do you think?”

It takes all of her strength to stay standing. “What’s the intel?”

* * *

Mary is packing frantically in the midst of Christmas-themed Chaos. There’s tinsel everywhere because Peter had gotten ahold of a bag and decided every square inch of their house needed to sparkle, and music is playing from somewhere, and the TV is on, and she can’t find her damn boots anywhere…

“May, the phone!” Mary calls down into the kitchen when she hears it ring. She can’t get to it right now. There’s clothing everywhere and she has maybe ten minutes before she needs to get the fuck out of here. 

“It’s Richard!” May yells back. 

Mary frantically stumbles down the stairs and snatches the receiver from her sister’s flour-coated hands. “Rich?”

“Hey! Listen, I’m on my way home right now, but I was gonna stop by Blockbuster if you wanted me to rent anything—”

“Richard,” she hisses urgently, low so May can’t hear (like she even could over Peter’s carol singing and _Rudolph_ on CBS, but hey, once a spy always a spy). “I need you to meet me at headquarters in thirty minutes. I’m getting everything together—”

“Mary, what? It’s Christmas Eve, we can’t just go—”

“I’ve already told May that my aunt broke her hip. She’s fine with watching Peter.”

“But—”

“ _Richard_ ,” Mary snaps. “We _do not_ have time. This is important.”

There’s a pause. Then Richard says, “Alright. I’ll be there when you are.”

Her shoulders sag with relief. She thanks him and hangs up, and then zips up her duffel and hurried back into the kitchen. Peter is sitting on the counter and he’s—“Peter, baby, what are you doing?”

“Eatin’ dough with my nose,” he replies happily.

Mary rolls her eyes and does her best to get it out. This shit doesn’t even phase her anymore and that’s saying something. She presses a kiss to his cheek and—

If she’d known right then that it would be the last time she’d see him for almost twenty years, she would have at least hugged him. She would have said more. More likely, she never would have left in the first place. 

But it is the last time, and something in her knows. A shock runs down her spine and dread fills her stomach and she brushes it off as pre-mission nerves. 

Mary hugs May. “I’ll be back in like, two days tops okay? And make sure he opens the blue present before the green one or it’ll spoil the whole thing. I love you both, okay? Bye!”

They call their own goodbyes but she barely hears them. Her heart is pounding in her ears and then the door slams shut behind her.

Mary sucks in a sharp breath. Snow is falling. 

She slips into the night.

* * *

4 HOURS LATER

(SOMEWHERE OVER THE ATLANTIC OCEAN)

The helicarrier rocks with the force behind the storm and Mary is thrown into a wall, but she doesn’t let it deter her. She keeps stumbling forward, still soaked from their arrival by chopper only ten minutes prior. 

Behind her, Richard’s got his gun in a white-knuckled grip. He’s watching her six. 

“Any sign of the hostages?” He asks their team. 

“ _Negative_ ,” replies Cooper. “ _Still approaching observation deck._ ”

“They’ll be there,” Mary whispers.

“How do you know that?” 

“Because that’s where Fury said they would be,” she snaps. His face hardens but she doesn’t have time to take it back. They’re on a serious crunch here: in twenty minutes this whole ship is gonna be blown to bits from the explosives she’s supposed to be hunting down—either that, or it’ll get swallowed by the storm before they can even go off. 

Suddenly Mary stops, raising her fist. Richard comes to a halt behind her.

“What is it?” he whispers.

“You didn’t hear that?”

She’s just about to describe the clattering sound she’d heard when someone knocks Richard’s legs out from under him and sends his gun skidding off to the right. 

Mary rounds. She snatches the wrist of the arm that tries to grab her and twists. What follows is a series of high-speed precision strikes, each one blocked excellently by the other. Neither of them can land a fucking blow until: 

A push, a twist, a knee to her groin. 

Nat shoves her into a wall and presses her forearm against Mary’s trachea. “Hey there.”

Mary steps on Nat’s foot to get free. “Hey, little sister.”

Nat grunts in reply. Richard looks between them with wide eyes. “What the fuck?”

“I was just about to ask that same question,” Nat pants. “Come on, it’s not safe to talk out in the open like this.”

* * *

She drags them into the hydraulics room, a red-lit, enclosed space. There are two dead guards on the floor and a gigantic pile of C-4 in the corner.

“It needs to be dismantled,” Nat says, holding out some kind of kit. “I was never great with that sort of thing. Couldn’t figure out which wires went where.”

Mary nudges Richard. “Do your thing.”

“I love how you just assume that because I’m smart, it automatically means I know how to deconstruct an explosive device.”

“Well _don’t_ you?”

He rolls his eyes. “Yeah.”

Nat is staring at her when Mary looks back. She’s got this glint in her eye and her lip is quirked up. “So are you two like a thing, or…?”

“It’s none of your business,” Mary says shortly. “What the hell are you doing here?”

“Please,” Nat scoffs. “We’re here for the same reason, Maria, don’t play dumb.”

She pauses, very aware that Richard is listening to every word they say and _he_ doesn’t know the real reason she’d come tonight. “Have you seen him?” 

Nat shakes her head. “I think they’re saving him for last.”

“Fuck.”

She drags a hand through her still-damp hair and feels Nat’s hand on her shoulder a millisecond later, squeezing hard. “You know what we have to do, right?”

“No,” Mary shakes her head. “We’re not bringing him in.”

Nat’s features harden. “Do you have any idea how much intel he has? Getting him would end HYDRA, Maria. We need him on our side—”

“He deserves to live his life!” Mary hisses, and a pipe bursts overhead. The room starts to fill with steam. “He’s a _person_ , Natalia. Don’t reduce him to anything less.”

“I know you want to believe that—”

“Believe it? I _know_ it. I used to be where he is now!”

“That’s different,” Nat says hotly. “They didn’t have a chance to get to you the way they got to him—”

“That’s not what it’s about. The serum they have all of us _heals_. Every time they fry his brain, it fucks with his neurotransmitters, but the longer he’s awake the more time they have to fix themselves, which means the longer he’s out of stasis, the more shit he gives them. It’s always been that way. He knows who he is deep down, Nat.”

Her sister massages her temples. “You’re giving me a fucking migraine, _suka_.”

“You know I’m right.”

“Being factually correct isn’t the same thing as being right.”

Mary rolls her eyes. “This is why all of the girls wanted to kill you when we were kids.”

“No,” Nat grins. “They wanted to kill me because I was better than them.”

“And you were obvious about it, which is stupid and almost as bad as being shit at fighting.”

Nat socks her arm. “Thanks for the support, sis.”

“Hey, anytime.”

Right then the helicarrier rocks again. Nat is thrown into Mary, who catches her, helps her steady her footing. They both stiffen at the sound of gunfire and exchange a grim look. 

Mary turns to Richard, who is now covered in a sheen of sweat and staring right at her.

“Stay here,” she tells him.

“Mary—”

“I’m serious. Get that shit taken care of and meet us on the deck when you’re done, okay?”

His jaw tightens but he nods, turning back to the C-4. Mary and Nat draw their weapons and start moving.

* * *

They find him in the air traffic control tower.

He’s already killed everyone in there and he stands in the midst of their bodies. There’s blood all over the floor and walls, but none on him. His hair is matted and his face is dark and with every crack of lightning, his metal arm gleams. 

“Hey soldier,” Natalia greets dryly. “Remember us?”

The Winter Soldier turns to them slowly. His eyes are just… black. There’s nothing inside them. They wiped him good this time, Mary thinks. They even took away the fear. 

“James,” Mary says, before he can speak. “Your name is James Buchanan Barnes—”

“ _No!_ ”

She doesn’t see it coming, but he advances and with a backhand of his arm, knocks not her but Nat into the nearest wall. Her sister’s head slams against it and she falls. 

Mary sucks in a sharp breath. He’s close—closer than close, actually. 

With shaking hands, she slowly reaches out. “James,” she says again, an inch from his heaving chest, “it’s me. It’s Maria.”

Something sparks in his eyes but it’s swallowed with fury. He grabs her by the straps of her suit and rams her against the door. Mary’s vision swims. She grabs him right back, putting her hands on either side of his stubble-coated face. “ _James_. Your name is James Buchanan Barnes, you were a sergeant in the 107th infantry in World War Two—”

“Stop it!” He screams, and throws her.

Mary skids, carried further across the room as she slips on blood. Her stomach churns and she slams her hands down to stop the momentum. “You know it’s the truth!” She screams back, furious. “You know me, you son of a bitch! Don’t you _dare_ pretend!”

He kicks her stomach. Mary sees spots. She rolls over and retches. “Fuck.”

James bends down while she’s gasping and grabs her by her hair. He tilts her head back and suddenly there’s a knife at her throat, cold and already drawing blood for how sharp it is. 

“James,” she whispers, “please.”

He hesitates. Her hand comes up to close around his own, and something in his face changes a little, but then—

He’s down and Nat is standing over him. She’d rammed the back of a discarded rifle into his skull. 

“Nat, what the hell?”

“He was gonna kill you!”

Dazed and on all-fours, James shakes his head. He manages to stand shakily and hits her again, once and then twice with metal fist and flesh. 

“Stop it!” Mary screams, launching herself at him. She grabs his right arm, his real one. “You’re hurting her!”

But he knows that. He’s doing it on purpose and she _hates_ that. She climbs on his back and gets her legs around his neck and slams down with her fists, once and then twice, just to make him disoriented enough to stop.

He tosses her off and she lands like a rag doll. Panting, Mary gets back up. She glances at Nat—crumpled on the floor, cheek split open, face bloody. 

“Don’t do this,” Mary whispers, and it’s only when she tastes the salt on her lip that she realises she’s crying. “Come on. _Please_. You don’t have to be like this—”

His fist closes around her throat and she lets it. She can’t hurt him anymore and she’s so fucking _tired_. His fingers dig in, freezing cold and crushing her windpipe. 

He’s done this before. She’d thrown him off that time because she’d been out of control: volatile, wild and full of terror. 

Now she can stop it. 

Just when the edges of her vision are beginning to blur and she’s thinking, _this is it, this is the end,_ her eyes catch moment.

Mary assumes it’s Nat, more stubborn than anyone she’s ever met and determined not to go down without a fight, but it’s not.

It’s Richard who shoots James. 

Once in the arm: the bullet rebounds off the metal and ricochets. Richard ducks and fires off another round and this one hits James in his flesh shoulder. 

Mary, on the ground and coughing, tries to tell him “ _No_ ,”—though which ‘him’ she means is unclear; maybe both of them, but it doesn’t matter because neither of them hear her. 

Richard doesn’t cower when it happens. He doesn’t even blink. His eyes are wide open and he’s looking right at her because he knows what’s coming. He’d run here knowing. His bones had known and they had still carried him, his heart had down and it had still beat for… 

For her. 

It’s always for her.

She doesn’t realise she’s psychically reaching out until she feels it: that first tendril of warmth which turns into an avalanche. Mary’s breath catches. 

His mind cracks wide open and for the first time Mary is seeing herself the way he does, and in his eyes she’s… she’s good, and beautiful, and perfect to him. 

_I love you, baby,_ he thinks.

And then the warmth leaves and the light in his eyes goes with it. Richard falls back. Mary’s blood freezes. She stares, open mouthed and stunned, at his unmoving body, at the hole the bullet had made in his skull.

“No,” she croaks, crawling toward him. Her chest is tight. She can’t—she can’t breathe. “No, baby, come on. Please, _please_ don’t leave me? Come on, please, I need you…” she shakes him and he just rolls, lying flat on his back, all empty and steadily growing paler. “Baby, wake up! _Wake up!_ ”

But he won’t.   
  


He’s dead. 

When she shrieks the window panels crack and blow inward. The Winter Soldier ducks. When the glass rises from the ground and starts churning, tearing through the air with the force and speed of a hurricane, he makes for the door.

“You bastard!” She screams, ripping away from Richard’s prone form. “You fucking _bastard!_ ”

She’s almost got her hands on him when Nat grabs her. “Stop it!” She says. “Stop it, Maria. Let him go.”

“No, _no_ ,” she’s sobbing, a mess, shaking and weak and all she can think is: what is she gonna say to Peter? “He killed him, he _killed him—_ ”

The floor rumbles beneath their boots. They hold onto each other to keep from falling. “We have to go,” Nat snaps. “This whole place is gonna blow.”

“No, I can’t, I can’t leave him—”

Nat slaps her. It’s sharp and leaves her face hot and stinging. “Maria. We need to leave _now_.”

Maria’s chest hurts. Her stomach feels warm. She realises that James had cut her when he’d been choking her: there’s deep gash in her abdomen that burns when she breathes. 

He’s gone now, disappeared, a ghost again.

“ _Maria_.”

“Okay,” Mary whispers, eyes still on Richard. “Okay.”

Then she closes them and grabs Nat, grips her hard, and thinks: the beach, the waves, the moonlight on the water; that dusty cabin with the spiders in the cupboards and the sand in the sheets—

Her gut twists. Sound ceases to exist. There’s a monumental amount of pressure sucking, squeezing, and then expelling:

They fall in a heap on the living room floor of the beachside cabin. Mary knows it by smell, by touch. She rolls onto her back and off of Nat, who heaves and coughs against the floor. 

“What… what the fuck?”

Mary is too weak to speak. She feebly reaches for Nat, who follows the flit of her eyes to her bloody stomach. “Oh, shit.”

It’s a quick, stumbling journey to the bathtub. Nat hits the light switch with her elbow and yanks back the shower curtain to deposit Mary into the tub. She’s panting and wide-eyed, terrified out of her mind. 

Mary remembers the warmth of her body receding momentarily and then returning, this time with a needle and thread. She tears into Mary’s suit but her hands are shaking and stained with crimson. 

Mary grabs them. 

Their eyes meet. 

She leans up to whisper in her sister’s ear. “You are made of marble,” she says, and is conscious just long enough to see Nat’s face to steel. 

The black takes her.

* * *

  
Still stuck in that hazy space between sleep and wakefulness, Mary forgets for a second. 

Then the pain comes, and her stomach plummets when she remembers it—him, on the ground, twisted and bloody and dead. 

Mary opens her eyes. 

There is no one in the bed with her, just cold empty space. She pushes herself off of the mattress slowly, carefully, very aware of how tight her abdomen’s been wrapped. She grunts when she stands and grabs onto the nightstand to keep from keeling over. 

The journey to the kitchen is a slow one, but she finds Nat at the end of it: sitting cross-legged on the counter with a bowl of cereal in hand and a newspaper in her lap. 

She raises her head. 

“You look like shit,” Mary rasps.

“So do you.”

Mary nods and goes over to the coffee. She pours herself a huge cup and downs an obscene amount. Nat is staring. 

“So you can teleport,” her sister states.

Mary doesn’t feel like talking about this. She doesn’t feel like talking about anything, actually, but if she knows anything about Nat it’s that she’s nosy as hell and won’t let up until she gets answers. 

“Yeah, I can.”

“How long’s that been going on, exactly?”

A shrug. “A couple years. I’ve only done it a few times but I’ve never… I’ve never made that big of a jump.”

“It almost killed you.”

Mary meets her eyes. “I know.”

_I wish it had._

Nat sets her bowl aside and slips off the counter. When she goes to hold her, Mary finds she can’t hold Nat back. Her arms won’t work. She can’t… she can’t even _cry_. 

“You’re in shock,” Nat whispers, like she’s the telepathic one here. 

“He killed him,” Mary whispers, letting it sink in for the first time. “He just fucking… he just shot him like it was nothing, like I didn’t love him, like—Nat, why would he…?”

Nat leans back to hold her face. “Maria…”

She feels like vomiting when she says, “I have to find him.”

“Wait, what? Hey, _no_ , it’s time to let this go, okay? It’s time to stop.”

“I made a promise to someone,” Mary whispers. “Someone who took care of me and—and loved him. I have to find him and help him.”

Nat takes a step back. “Help him? After what he did?”

“It’s not his fault.”

“Maria—”

She makes up her mind right then and there, and really it’s not hard. The movies and the books make monumental decisions out to be bigger and harder than they are, but it’s more like a switch being flipped. She just knows what she has to do, and is certain, and says it. 

“I’m dead.”

Nat frowns. “What?”

“That’s what you need to tell everyone. When Fury asks, you tell him I died on that carrier, alright? Tell anyone who asks, and I mean _anyone_ ,” she grabs her sister by the shoulder, “I’m gone and I’m _not_ coming back.”

“Maria, what the hell are you—”

They’ll be coming for her now. They’ll have gotten it out of James and they’ll be after her.

“Promise me.”

“I can’t promise that! No goddamn way, not when I don’t know if you’ll be safe!” 

“My safety doesn’t matter!” Mary shouts, almost hysterically. _Just his. Just Peter’s._

“Of course it does!”

“Natalia!” Mary grabs Nat and locks their eyes. “ _Promise me._ ” 

Nat sucks in a sharp, terrified breath. “Will I ever see you again?”

Mary presses their foreheads together and tries to hold it in: the fear, the grief, the anger. “I’ll find you,” she whispers. “I’ll always find you.”

And she will: climbing up the side of the building and in through the fire escape, waiting patiently in the dark. 

She’ll find her. 

But not for a long, long time. 

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

  
  


“Higher.”

The little girl in the black skirt grimaces—not just with concentration but with pain. Her wrists twist the slightest amount but she might as well be trying to move a boulder with her bare strength. 

Her focus breaks. She gasps and falls to her knees, as white as a sheet. 

“What are you doing?” asks her teacher. “Keep going.”

“I can’t,” the girl sobs. “I’m so tired. I can’t…”

Then it starts: a trail of crimson blood streaking from her nose. She presses her finger to it and stares down in abject horror. “What’s happening to me?”

“It’s normal,” her teacher assures. “You’re just stretching the limitations of what you can do. Now stand up. Break through the wall.”

The little girl wipes her face and struggles back to her feet. She glares at the solid brick wall before her: it’s only four feet tall and made just to get destroyed. When she turns her glare onto her teacher, something throbs in the pit of her stomach. 

The wall shatters and then explodes outward. 

There’s a deadly pause, and then,

“Very good, Wanda,” Madame Maria says softly. “You’re learning.”

* * *

_fin_

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> GOD! 
> 
> AS YOU CAN SEE 
> 
> NAT LIED ABOUT SOME SHIT
> 
> rip richard btw u were a real one ✊😔

**Author's Note:**

> translations: 
> 
> blyad’ = fuck
> 
> mladenets = baby 
> 
> suka = bitch
> 
> as always pls pls pls tell me what u thought nehekhsndnd IM SO EXCITED feedback is like oxygen to me!!!


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